Jeannette Okinczyc announced as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

August 9, 2024

After a national search and many rounds of interviews with various stakeholders, I’m pleased to announce Jeannette Okinczyc, CISSP has been selected as the next Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at University of Alaska. Jeannette has been serving as Interim Chief Information Security Officer since the end of February, and we are excited to have her in this role permanently.   

Jeannette brings with her more than 20 years of experience in higher education, including 12 years with University of Alaska, nine of which have been spent in various roles within Security Operations.

During her time as interim CISO, she oversaw several significant efforts to a successful outcome, including the rollout of MFA to all students, implementation of a significant vulnerability remediation project, and a collaborative, cross-system AD environment intensive security hardening. Through her work on these efforts, she showed herself to be a capable and effective collaborator and leader who drove these initiatives to completion. Please join me in welcoming Jeannette as the permanent UA CISO!   

With the conclusion of the CISO search, we are prioritizing recruitment for the Manager of Security Operations position vacated by Jeannette. More information about this effort will be provided soon.