New Interim Associate CIO and Chief Information Security Officer announced

Interim VP, Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Michael Casdorph sent the following message to leadership and IT staff:

The Division of Information Technology has taken steps to fill a key leadership vacancy with the appointment of an interim associate CIO and chief information security officer. With this appointment, we are improving our cybersecurity posture across the university and health system while meeting our regulatory obligations. One of our key IT goals is to “leverage IT risk management and information security practices to protect the confidentiality of our students, patients, faculty and staff, and to reduce adverse impacts to the university.” We are in the process of beginning nationwide recruitment for a world-class chief information security officer that can best lead our cybersecurity strategy at Augusta University.

Interim Associate CIO and Chief Information Security Officer

Clyde Hewitt (MS, CISSP, CHS, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, Level III Program Manager) has been named interim associate CIO and chief information security officer. In this role, Hewitt is responsible for leading the information security strategy, architecture, operations and compliance activities to meet our legal, regulatory and contractual obligations to protect sensitive information as required by regulations, including both HIPAA and FERPA. As the senior security official as defined in the HIPAA Security Rule, this appointment will fulfill our regulatory obligations to appoint a single individual with responsibilities for all administrative, physical and technical security to protect sensitive information, including Protected Health Information (PHI). Specific responsibilities of the assigned role include managing the security risk management process, access management, vendor management, incident management, business continuity management, physical security as it relates to the protection of PHI, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and other sensitive information, and technical security controls.

Hewitt brings more than 30 years of executive leadership experience in both the public and private sectors. Most recently, he was vice president of security strategy with our security partner, CynergisTek. His experience includes being the senior security advisor, client executive, developer of strategic direction for information and cybersecurity services, and nationwide business development lead for security services. He has extensive executive experience developing, implementing and evaluating security program strategy. Hewitt is a nationally recognized speaker and writer, and a current board member of the North Carolina Healthcare Information & Communications Alliance, a nonprofit consortium dedicated to accelerating the transformation of the U.S. healthcare system through the effective use of information technology, information and analytics.