Erik Avakian

Erik Avakian

Commonwealth of PA, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Erik Avakian was named Chief Information Security Officer for the commonwealth in 2010.
Erik joined the commonwealth in 2005 and became Deputy CISO in 2007. He has over 17 years experience in securing enterprise-level environments and is an expert in reducing risk and mapping security to the business. He has extensive experience in security governance, risk management, compliance and incident response and remediation. As CISO. Erik is responsible for establishing enterprise security strategy, standards, controls, and security policies and lead the Enterprise Information Security Office, which defends against cyber attacks, reduces the commonwealth’s vulnerability to cyber attacks, and minimize the damage and recovery time from attacks if and when they occur.
Erik holds numerous industry certifications including Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Security Auditor (CISA), Certified Government Chief Information Officer (CGCIO) and ITIL v3. He is an active member of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) Security and Privacy Committee, the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2), the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), and the Pennsylvania Criminal Intelligence Center PaCIC).