25th Annual Ohio HTCIA Salt Fork Conference

Keynote Speaker: Nathan Norris

State of Ohio Deputy CISO Operations
Office of Information Technology
Information Security and Privacy

Mr. Norris started his career as a Military Police officer in the Army, working in the K-9 section. His journey into the world of computers began when he started helping out with the computers in the kennel. This led to the Army discovering his knack for technology, which originated from a father-son project where they built a home computer with hard drives, well before the era of floppy drives. Consequently, the Army transitioned him from K-9 to becoming the automation OIC for the 25th MP Battalion. Back then, they were running Novell Netware 2.1 on an ArcNet network. Ethernet was new and out of budget, so he self-taught Netware and rebuilt the network, including network printers and more, bringing significant enhancements.

After his military service, he became a master Certified Novell Instructor (CNI). Upon returning to Ohio, he also took on the role of a part-time police officer for the Sunbury Police Department. This is where his interest in forensic investigations began, even before the title or certification existed. Currently, he is the Deputy CISO for Operations, overseeing several departments, including the forensic department. Their forensic work primarily focuses on administrative or cyber investigations, such as identifying how threat actors took control of computers and their subsequent actions.

Additionally, he oversees the State Incident Response Team (SIRT), which handles alerts and threat hunting, the Vulnerability Management team, which proactively addresses software gaps before they are exploited, the Engineering Department, responsible for deploying software and managing hardware like IPS and WAF, and the Architecture Department, which solves problems and finds new solutions for issues identified by Vulnerability Management.