Arizona’s cyber command center is for collaboration, CIO says

Arizona Chief Information Officer J.R. Sloan told StateScoop in a recent interview that the state’s launch last month of a new cybersecurity command center is a unique opportunity to collaborate across sectors.

“Cybersecurity is homeland security and that’s really built on the reality that as we are more interconnected — not only as citizens in all the business we do, but recognizing the interconnectedness of state government, with local, law enforcement and our communities — that we have to have a place where we can come together and collaborate on that protection,” Sloan told StateScoop at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ annual conference last month.

The new center is run out of the state’s counterterrorism information center and furthers the state’s efforts to consolidate its cybersecurity efforts. Its opening came a few months after Gov. Doug Ducey placed the state’s chief information security officer, Tim Roemer, in charge of the state Department of Homeland Security, making Arizona the second state, after New Jersey, to group cybersecurity with homeland security.

Sloan also reviewed StateRAMP, an information-security standards program designed to hold cloud vendors to certain minimum standards. That project is currently being tested in Arizona.