Damira Pon
Damira Pon, Master of Science Information Science: Damira Pon is currently the Academic Coordinator for Digital Forensics at the School of Business at University at Albany-State University of New York. She has taught classes including information security, risk analysis, security policies, intelligence and investigation. She also serves as a faculty advisor for the UAlbany ISACA SG, Cyber Defense Organization, Digital Forensics Association and Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) student organizations. She has served on the National Cyberwatch Center Cybersecurity Curriculum Standards panel and contributed towards the NIST Cybersecurity is Everyone’s Job NIST publication and is also published in several conference proceedings, journal articles, and books in topics related to information security education, audit, botnets, patching and risk analysis.
She is on the Board of Directors (Secretary) of the ISACA Hudson Valley chapter and National Collegiate Cyber Defense League (NECCDL) (also serving in the past as VP and currently as Secretary) that runs the Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NECCDC), which has collegiate teams of students acting as a Security Operations Center while getting requests from management and industry professionals performing penetration testing of their systems. Before she became a part of the organizing committee, she served as the coach for UAlbany’s NECCDC student team. She also previously coached teams for the Collegiate Pentesting Competition (CPTC) and the Department of Energy CyberForce Competition, among others. She was part of the organizational team of the NYS Cybersecurity Conference and founding team of the Annual Symposium on Information Assurance (ASIA) and the International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime (ICDF2C). She has also helped volunteer for conferences, such as, the Diana Initiative and Women in CyberSecurity (WiCYS).
Over time, she has developed a wide range of experience in online and blended education in information security and forensics, information security policy and compliance (business continuity / disaster recovery, information classification, risk assessment), creation of standard operating procedures for law enforcement in digital forensics, crime mapping related to Internet Crimes against Children (ICAC), data analysis (including cyber incident and log analysis), and penetration testing for IT security audits. She served on an a National Curriculum Standards review committee as a part of the National Cyberwatch Center and as a Faculty Fellow of National Cyberwatch West.
Related to critical infrastructure security, Damira was previously a Senior Research Analyst over 10 years at the NYS Center for Information and Assurance and participated in grant activities for multiple federal, state and foundation grants including grant writing, budget development, reporting, project management and project work including those related to resilient smart grid and transportation. She has created labs and training material for training in cyber defense for a couple nation states in Europe in a partnership with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In addition, she performed some consulting work for the federal government an information security analysis of laptops that had travelled to countries with national security concerns. Damira has worked on the information classification policy and training for New York State. She also has performed an audit of a mid-level telecom company including penetration testing as well as physical access security, and UNIX and Windows system auditing.
In terms of University service, Damira is currently on the Undergraduate Academic Council and has been the co-chair of the General Education sub-committee since January 2023 including revisions based on SUNY changes to General Education categories including the addition of the Diversity Equity Inclusion and Social Justice. In addition, she has served since Fall 2023 as the co-chair of the Massry School of Business's Diversity Equity and Inclusion / Climate Committee. She has regularly served as a part of hiring committees across campus including for 11 University advisors at the Academic Support Center, hiring of an Assistant Director for the Office of Career & Professional Development and two Assistant Registrars for the Office of the Registrar as well as served as an evaluator/tester representing Advisement / Student Services for PeopleSoft updates/upgrades.
She enjoys exploring upcoming trends, developing new skills, and building both private and public sector relationships and partnerships towards cooperative initiatives.