Khan serving on GHP Cybersecurity Task Force

Vice Provost for Information Technology Kamran Khan is co-leading the Education Cybersecurity Committee of the Cybersecurity Task Force that was established in March by the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP).

The GHP task force identified a critical need for improving basic awareness, protection and infrastructure, particularly for small to mid-sized businesses and hosted a panel discussion Nov. 1 on “State of Cybersecurity: Preserving Business Vitality.”

Kamran Khan

“This type of education is critical for business leaders that need to know how to protect the information assets of their organization and helps them create a framework to assign roles and responsibilities,” Khan said.

As part of the Q-and-A expert panel during last week’s forum, Khan said the education sector’s concern “is with risk to billions of dollars in research in higher education, privacy of student records and digital educational assets.”

The panel, moderated by Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa, also discussed the transformation taking place regarding phishing emails, social media, mobile devices, cloud computing and software vulnerabilities that need to be linked to best practices in security.

The task force’s leading experts from multiple industries created a guide that offers simple strategies to protect a company from a cybersecurity attack. The guide and a cybersecurity assessment tool that companies can use to determine their vulnerability are available online at Houston.org/cybersecurity.