Northwestern joins Big Ten universities to launch joint cybersecurity operations center

Indiana University (IU), Northwestern University, Purdue University, Rutgers University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln announced the activation of OmniSOC, which is a specialized Cyber- Security Operations Center (SOC) that is known for providing trust-worthy and practical cyber-intelligence to all its members.

The OmniSOC is basically a pioneering initiative that is launched by these 10 Academic Alliance universities with a primary motive to help and guide higher education institutions in reducing the time from awareness of a cyber-security threat/risk anywhere and mitigation everywhere for all its members and clients.

The OmniSOC has its basis at the Indiana University and has got 20 years of experience and abilities from the 24-hour Global Research Network Operations Center (GlobalNOC), that provides services to the government, education and research networks throughout the country. Using the real-time security data feeds and information from the campus of each member, as well as the subscriptions from government and corporate security, the OmniSOC recognizes all suspicious and malicious activity that requires mitigation and provides a very rapid response through human analysis and learning of machine.

Moreover, OmniSOC also works in a very close collaboration with the federally chartered Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) at IU. It was established in 2003 and its primary mission is to help and further cyber-security protection, response, and information exchange among its 580 members in a very safe and secure manner

OmniSOC has selected the Elastic Stack as a platform for its security analytics. The Elastic Stack is used to take in, process and analyze large quantities of data and information to highlight and hunt for cyber threats and risks to member’s systems. OmniSOC is planning to expand its membership beyond the Big Ten Academic Alliance as it scales up its services.