Moan looks at her work with the NYC Cyber Command as a source of confidence and optimism in a world that seems to get more chaotic every day.
“Thankfully, I have a great team at NYC Cyber Command, which affords me the ability to sleep,” she said. “One area of focus that we’ve always had as a city is to train for worst-case scenarios.”
NYC Cyber Command, part of the New York City Office of Technology and Innovation, has the massive job of protecting all city systems against hackers and other digital criminals. That means Moan has the responsibility to protect more than 100 agencies — and help them recover if they do suffer an attack.
She doesn’t go at the job alone, of course.
The NYC Cyber Academy, launched in 2022 as a first-of-its-kind citywide program, teaches city employees from various agencies how to respond to attacks, offering participants “upskilling” and “reskilling” through a four-week program, which graduated 25 people last year. As the program grows it will continue to change based on the lessons provided by previous cohorts.
“It has grown from focusing on strengthening incident response capabilities for our cyber liaisons at each agency, to now expanding beyond just cyber liaisons to city staff as well,” Moan said.
Moan, who previously held other cyber-security jobs with the New York Police Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, will — given her even higher-profile role now — certainly play a part in how the role of CISO continues to transform.
“We’re already seeing the CISO role leveraged as a trusted adviser for risk assessments more broadly. This will only increase at a rapid pace in the next few years,” she said, before observing that all cyber attacks carry widespread financial, reputational and other costs. “We should look to partner with the business and be prepared to socialize risk in business terms regardless of if you’re in public or private sector.”
