James G. Mottola is a Vice President of Data Privacy, Investigations and Security for Porzio Compliance Services. Mr. Mottola has more than 25 years of experience in the United States Secret Service including serving as the former Special Agent in charge of the Newark Field Office of the United States Secret Service. Mr. Mottola leverages his experience to counsel and advise clients on matters of information security, data privacy, physical security, schools safety, internal corporate investigations, incident response management, and other compliance related matters.
Higher education environments play host to uniquely valuable and regulated data that needs to be recoverable and protected at all times.
Colleges and universities have to find the staff and have to pay them well to retain them because the job market is very competitive. That’s one of the big struggles. IT leaders are transitioning from doers to coordinators of internal and external assets and internal and external solutions like third party. Time is money, and recovery time and recovery point objectives are important because you’ll have people sitting around doing nothing if they don’t have access to that information, which I’ve seen before in some ransomware situations — and it’s pretty crippling.