A little more than a year after standing up its State Cybersecurity Office (SCSO), bringing 15 state agencies into a unified group, Arkansas is moving toward whole-of-state cybersecurity.
The Arkansas Cybersecurity Act of 2025, which became law April 8, 2025, gave state CISO Gary Vance responsibility for cybersecurity across the executive branch and governor’s office. A few agency CISOs have since joined the SCSO and report to Vance, and more are expected to follow.
“Over the past year, we have been working feverishly to get our state cybersecurity policy in place,” Vance said Thursday during a panel conversation* at the Cyber Civil Defense Summit Central, hosted in Baton Rouge, La., by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity…