Higher education cybersecurity in Michigan runs from flagship research universities handling federally funded science and sensitive health data to community colleges serving working adults with lean security teams and limited budgets. The environments are different in scale but not in consequence. Student records, research data, clinical systems, and the personal information of tens of thousands of people flow through these institutions every day, and the leaders in this feature are responsible for protecting all of it in environments where openness is a cultural value and security budgets rarely match the threat surface.
Asmat Noori — Interim Chief Information Security Officer and Executive Director of Information Assurance, University of Michigan
Asmat Noori has spent more than twenty-two years at the University of Michigan, building institutional knowledge that spans healthcare IT, research computing, and enterprise information assurance. One of the more distinctive projects in his background is the design and implementation of a Virtual Data Enclave at ICPSR, a politically and socially sensitive data archive serving more than 750 member institutions and multiple federal agencies. The enclave created an isolated environment allowing global researchers exclusive access to sensitive social science data while maintaining security and minimizing disclosure risk. That kind of problem, balancing open academic access with federal compliance requirements across a globally distributed user base, captures exactly the tension that defines higher education security. He stepped into the interim CISO role in July 2024 after serving as information assurance assistant director and information systems security manager.
Andrew Weisskopf — Chief Information Security Officer, Michigan State University
Andrew Weisskopf arrived at Michigan State in June 2024 with a career built almost entirely inside higher education security, spanning Iowa State University, Binghamton University, and the University of Delaware. At Binghamton, he built the security organization from scratch. At Iowa State, he spent fifteen years progressing from systems analyst through network engineer to information security officer. At Delaware, he modernized information security operations and advanced governance across a distributed campus environment. One thread runs through all of it: he is consistently brought in to build things that do not yet exist, whether that is a security team, a HIPAA function for a health sciences clinic, or a NIST 800-171 compliant research environment that opened new federal grant opportunities. Michigan State is the next iteration of that pattern.
Garrett McManaway — Senior Director of Information Security and Compliance and Chief Information Security Officer, Wayne State University
Before joining Wayne State in 2018, Garrett McManaway led global security operations at Delphi, building SOC, vulnerability management, and threat intelligence functions from the ground up, and managed threat detection services at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. That private sector and automotive supply chain background is unusual in a university CISO profile and shapes how he approaches security in an environment as complex as Wayne State, which spans education, research, administrative functions, and community engagement in the heart of Detroit. His expertise includes NIST frameworks, CMMC compliance, and generative AI deployment for cybersecurity capabilities. He also designs and delivers summer cybersecurity classes for exchange students, a detail that reflects the kind of mission alignment that distinguishes effective higher education security leaders from those who simply operate within one.
Sean Hagan — Chief Information Security Officer, Michigan Technological University
What Sean Hagan accomplished at the University of Alaska is worth stating directly. He developed the system’s first cybersecurity strategic plan, secured a roughly 260 percent increase in resource support including a 100 percent increase in FTE, expanded security tooling and capabilities by approximately 400 percent, and managed findings from more than twelve internal and external assessments across a statewide system spanning three universities and more than twenty campuses across 590,000 square miles. Before Alaska, he spent five years as CISO at Yavapai College in Arizona, where his program became a model for community colleges statewide and the institution recorded no IT or data-related audit findings during his entire tenure. He joined Michigan Technological University as CISO in March 2024. The pattern is consistent: he enters underdeveloped security environments and leaves them materially stronger.
Brandon Kaines — Chief Information Security Officer, Grand Rapids Community College
Brandon Kaines has spent more than a decade at Grand Rapids Community College, moving from information security officer to CISO in October 2019. His background before GRCC includes data security analysis at University of Michigan-Flint, security operations at Rock Ventures Command Center, and four years as an operational specialist in the US Navy. That military foundation, combined with a career spent entirely in Michigan’s education and security ecosystem, gives him a grounded, operationally focused approach to securing a community college environment where resources are finite and the student population is constantly changing. Ten years of institutional continuity at a single institution is its own form of expertise.
Michigan’s Higher Education Security Bench Runs Deeper Than Most Realize
What this group reflects is how seriously Michigan’s academic institutions have invested in security leadership across every tier of higher education. From a flagship research university managing federal compliance across globally distributed data to a community college serving a local workforce, the security challenges are real and the leaders meeting them are experienced. Several of these CISOs built their programs from nothing. Others arrived with decades of sector-specific knowledge and put it to work immediately. The campuses they protect are better for it.
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