By MC2 Nathan K Serpico

The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) welcomed information technology professionals from the United States Naval Academy (USNA) and Naval War College (NWC) for the latest gathering of the Navy Higher Education Information Technology Consortium (NHEITC), Oct. 24. The three peer institutions of the NHEITC have had a multi-year collaboration to enhance the consortium’s employment of information technology (IT) towards meeting the mission needs of the three institutions.

“This year we focused heavily on the new Cybersecurity Operations Center (CSOC),” said Joe LoPiccolo, NPS Chief Information Officer (CIO). “Although all three institutions have unique missions and provide their own cyber defenses, the CSOC has many new opportunities. Some have already been realized with advanced operational capabilities and by recent purchases to include all using the same Systems Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool. This will help correlate security events for quick defensive and preventive actions.”

As mission enablers of the three organizations, the IT leadership teams came together to determine ways in which efficiencies and economies of scale could be realized with shared cloud services, software license costs, hardware purchases and various other opportunities.

“The opportunity for the three Navy Higher Education Schools to meet together as the NHEITC, away from the day to day operational distraction is invaluable,” said Joe Pangborn, NWC CIO. “This collaboration provides a forum for the development of solutions to ensure the mission success of each institution.”

“The NHEITC provides a valuable forum for consideration of Navy higher education information technology issues having unique business, technology, policy and process aspects,” echoed Herb Elkin, USNA Deputy CIO.

The NHEITC ensures that, from an IT perspective, these three schools are able to operate as efficiently as possible.

“Long term, these collaborative efforts can reduce taxpayer costs and increase the quality of IT support services that are delivered to each of the school's faculty, students and staff,” stated Chris Gaucher, NPS Deputy CIO.