Wendy Nather builds-in information security at Texas Education Agency

Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Randy Southerland

Wendy Nather never planned to get into the security business. It wasn't exactly an accident, but arriving at her current position as information security director for the Texas Education Agency didn't follow the usual path.

She was working in Chicago as a UNIX system administrator for a private options trading company when it was acquired by Swiss Bank Corp. - now UBS. Fluent in both French and German, she volunteered to move to Switzerland to head up a support group then deploying the company's technology to its offices.

As she was finishing an assignment for the American branch of this Zurich-based financial services giant, the company was beginning to outsource many of its non-core functions. To ensure it stayed in compliance with strict Swiss banking laws, the company decided to conduct an extensive risk assessment of which jobs could be safely handed off to outside vendors without endangering the company or its clients.

“I was on that panel, and after that the bank went into a merger with another investment bank,” Nather says. “I was sent to London to oversee the security aspects of that merger.”

Once there, she became regional director for security of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. She found she loved the challenges of figuring out how to protect information and keep the company, its employees and clients safe.

It was a great experience, she recalls, but after spending so much time away from America, she knew it was time to come back. She missed home and, in her hometown of Austin, Texas, her parents were aging and needed someone to help care for them.

She came back to Texas in 2005 without a job, but feeling it was the place she needed to be. That's when she discovered that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was seeking an information security officer to take on creating a new and up-to-date security program.

As the governing body for all public education in the state, TEA holds a vast trove of data and personal information covering every student and school district in the state. Also, like many public sector agencies, it had been slow to come to grips with the modern realities of hackers and cyber-criminals. Now with renewed attention from the state legislature coupled with more funding, the agency was ready to take on the challenge. They needed someone who not only understood information systems, but had the background to protect them in an age when cyber threats were not only plentiful but getting more sophisticated.

“I pretty much had to build it from the ground up,” Nather recalls. “They had a few security functions that were being covered by operations people, but no coherent program and no dedicated information security officer.”

The agency's CIO told her they needed a “thought leader.” Her job was not just to work on securing data, but to understand issues and explain them to managers who know relatively little about the intricacies of security issues. Thanks to her private sector experience in one of the most security-conscious industries - financial services - they got that kind of ISO.

“She can consult on a variety of issues, and that makes her a really good strategic leader,” says Adam Jones, deputy commissioner and chief operating officer for TEA.

He credits her with being able to build support and understanding for security programs that often change the ways people were accustomed to doing things.

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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