I have been involved with the MOREnet Consortium for over twenty years, with about half of that time serving on the Council in some capacity. As I approach retirement, serving as the Chair of the MOREnet Council has been a perfect way to wrap up this chapter.
Over the years, MOREnet has served on task forces for different state agencies, ranging from cybersecurity and business continuity to rural broadband initiatives. It was during one of those community volunteer projects that a MOREnet executive team member reminded me that network assessments were included as part of my Membership Service Package. When I began my role as Chief Information and Information Security Officer at Lincoln University, my biggest priority was refreshing failing infrastructure. The experts at MOREnet inspected our platform and made recommendations for improvement. I relied on that team to identify vendors who already had a public contract as well as assisting me with bid evaluations when replacing beyond end-of-life equipment. Within my first two years in the position, we replaced the backbone network. Our original 250 Mbps connection was one to two Gbps. Our one Gbps backbone is now a 20 Gbps backbone, and our wall jacks went from 100 Mbps to one Gbps. A few years later, I worked with MOREnet again to add redundancy to our connection.
For all the progress that has been made in IT operations at my organization, the reality is the MOREnet experts pointed me in the right direction, and I made it happen from there. My time spent on the Council reassured me that the team at MOREnet is always working on behalf of their members. They evaluate current products and services to make them better and are always looking forward to find new ways to add value to the consortium and improve current offerings. This organization is always thinking about us – the members.
Even as a CISSP with 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, I still rely annually on MOREnet’s Cybersecurity Operations Team to assess our security landscape. I do not view it as an audit; I value the assessment as a learning tool.
You will see some of the measurable results of the last year in the stories and figures on the next few pages. As my tenure as Chair comes to an end, I want to share my appreciation for the people of MOREnet. They cannot talk about their talent and expertise without sounding like they are bragging, but they are the best in the industry. I encourage you to get to know a few of them whether you are exploring simpler options for virtual learning environments, want to incorporate coding into your student and patron programming or need a complete infrastructure overhaul there is an expert at MOREnet that can provide insight and resources.
Here’s to being better connected!
John Bax
CIO/ CISO Lincoln University
MOREnet 2022 Council Chair