Brian Allen has officially stepped into the role of Associate Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Research, Teaching, and Learning.
Allen joined WashU in 2005 as the university’s first Network Security Analyst. Since then, he’s played a key role in defending our online environment, most recently as a Director of Information Security.
As a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), he has led WashU IT’s Incident Response and Vulnerability Management teams, helping WashU detect threats and proactively secure systems.
Allen said dependable working relationships are essential: “It worked very well to develop trust-based relationships with folks and departments on campus before a security incident hit. Then when an incident happened, we could work together to remediate it much more quickly. That approach should work for research security as well. I want to meet with as many researchers, research coordinators, and department leads as I can so we can try to get past security roadblocks as smoothly as possible as they pop up.”
Building these new relationships is one of the aspects he noted that he is most looking forward to in his new position. Congratulations to Allen as he assumes this new role.