MIS Alumnus Helps Government Client Win Award

April Nadeau, VP of Sentar and Thomas Graham, formerly of Sentar and now VP and CISO of CynergisTek.

Congratulations to College of Business (COB) alumnus, Thomas Graham. He is currently the VP and CISO for CynergisTek. While leading the Defense Health Agency (DHA) Mitigation and Remediation Support (MARS) team at his previous employer, Sentar, he and his team helped the company’s customer, DHA, develop standardized solutions to resolve a myriad of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. For these efforts, the DHA MARS team recently won a FedHealthIT Innovation award, given by FedHealthIT and G2Xchange Health.

Sentar invited Graham to participate in the award ceremony, which was held June 12 in Washington, DC at the National Press Club.  While at the COB, Graham received his BSBA MIS (management information systems) in 2007 and his MBA in 2010. He currently serves on the College of Business’ MIS Advisory Board and ECU’s Alumni Association Advisory Council.

“The COB and esteemed professors in the MIS program ingrain in each student the need to look at the details of a problem, ensure that the issue is understood, and if necessary not simply accept the conventional answer,” said Graham. “They also advocated understanding the audience that you are speaking to; providing the correct information to the correct individuals.”

Graham added, “Spending time outside of class with Dr. (Ravi) Paul and Dr. (Paul) Schwager allowed for further insight into the professional environment resulting in an easier transition from academia to industry.”