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DeSales University joins IU-led OmniSOC

DeSales the latest university to partner with premier higher education security operations center

Security and privacy May 23, 2022

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—DeSales University has partnered with OmniSOC, a shared, collaborative higher education security operations center (SOC) led by Indiana University (IU). OmniSOC provides 24/7 network security monitoring for its networks, conducts proactive threat hunting, and cybersecurity advisory services.

OmniSOC launched in 2018 as a first-of-its-kind higher education SOC. Today, OmniSOC is higher education’s only collaborative, multistate SOC, the only collaborative SOC supporting National Science Foundation research, and the only SOC with a multistate institutional data-sharing agreement for researchers.

We are excited to have OmniSOC as our new security partner. It is important to engage with an organization that understands the cybersecurity needs and concerns specific to higher education.

Mark Albert

Located in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, DeSales is a private, faith-based institution with an enrollment of about 3,100 students. US News and World Report ranks DeSales in the Top 100 in Regional Universities North, #49 in Best Colleges for Veterans, and #39 in Best Value Schools.  The DeSales Bulldogs compete in the NCAA Division III Middle Atlantic State Collegiate Athletic Conference (MAC).

Mark Albert is chief information officer at DeSales.

“We are excited to have OmniSOC as our new security partner. It is important to engage with an organization that understands the cybersecurity needs and concerns specific to higher education,” said Albert. “OmniSOC will know when DeSales is experiencing a threat but also when there are academic activities such as students in the Cyber Security programs learning ethical hacking practices. This balance is important to reduce the university’s cybersecurity risks while continuing to provide our students with a thorough education.”

Von Welch is executive director of OmniSOC.

“We welcome DeSales to the family of OmniSOC members that include higher education institutions and research facilities,” said Welch. “As we collaborate together from first awareness of a cybersecurity threat anywhere, we are able to reach mitigation everywhere with a much faster response.”

About OmniSOC

OmniSOC operates in conjunction with the formidable capabilities of the Global Network Operations Center (GlobalNOC) housed at Indiana University. It also makes use of threat intelligence insights from the Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) housed at Indiana University. OmniSOC also partners with counterparts in Australia, Canada, and the UK in a cybersecurity threat intelligence-sharing partnership.

OmniSOC was founded by members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance to reduce the time from first detection of a security threat to campus mitigation. Today, OmniSOC’s members include higher education and research institutions of all sizes, both public and private. OmniSOC, through ResearchSOC, supplies cybersecurity for the nation’s greatest research.

OmniSOC is a member of the Indiana University cybersecurity community, which includes the Research and Education Networks Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. See leading.iu.edu for more information.

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