NASCIO Honors California State CISO Vitaliy Panych
LOUISVILLE Ky., Tuesday, October 11, 2022 — The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) has named California CISO Vitaliy Panych as the recipient of the 2022 Thomas M. Jarrett State Cybersecurity Leadership Award. The program was created to pay homage to Thomas M. Jarrett, past president of NASCIO (2004 – 2005), for his passion for cybersecurity and honors state chief information security officers (CISOs) for exceptional accomplishments in their field. This award evolved from the Thomas M. Jarrett Cybersecurity Scholarship, being renamed in 2020 to reflect the vital role state CISOs hold in state cybersecurity efforts and their deeper involvement with NASCIO.
CA State CISO Vitaliy Panych is responsible for protecting the largest collection of digital information assets in the country, experiencing more than 400 million malicious probes daily. He works tirelessly to monitor the security of more than 140 state departments and has onboarded most of those departments to monitor their own internal networks. He expanded the California Department of Technology Security Operations Center, which operates under his purview performing log management implemented in a cloud-based, FedRAMP-compliant, scalable and redundant environment.
His leadership was instrumental in developing California’s first multi-year information security roadmap, Cal-Secure, which provides a best practices path to increase security maturity for every entity and outlines centralized and scalable information security governance and technical capabilities to achieve target goals and objectives. Additionally, Vitaliy created the Information Security Leadership Academy, which integrates core government leadership, business risk management, cybersecurity knowledge, skills and abilities training for a comprehensive curriculum. He is also responsible for the California Cybersecurity Education Summit that gathers leaders from across California to stay ahead of cyber threats.
Vitaliy was nominated by California Chief Information Officer Liana Bailey-Crimmins.
To view past recipients of the Thomas M. Jarrett State Cybersecurity Leadership Award, visit nascio.org/awards.
NASCIO Contact
Meredith Ward
Director of Policy and Research
National Association of State Chief Information Officers
859.514.9209
[email protected]
