In the first issue of CIT Employee Recognition News, the division celebrates many accomplishments, awards, and milestones. This issue also coincided with the new President's Awards for Employee Excellence ceremony.

Spotlight: President's Awards for Employee Excellence - CIT Nominations

• Anthony Adinolfi, One Cornell Nominee (nominated twice for different projects!)
• Ayham Boucher, Mission-Possible Nominee
• David Cutri, One Cornell Nominee
• Tammy Dibble, Thoughtful Leader Nominee
• Beth Goelzer, One Cornell Nominee
• Devaki Ginde, Game Changer Nominee
• Sean Gnau, One Cornell Nominee
• Jane Henion, One Cornell Nominee
• Chuck Jessop, Thoughtful Leader Nominee
• Julia Leonard, One Cornell Nominee
• Leon Lilly, One Cornell Nominee
• Bob Rowe, Mission-Possible Nominee
• Dawn Sirois, One Cornell Nominee
• Melissa Sweeney, One Cornell Nominee
• Irina Zhankov, One Cornell Nominee 

More Spotlights

• Google Storage Reduction: partnered with Alumni Affairs and Development for a 90% reduction in four years, avoiding ~$716K in annual penalties set to commence January 1, 2026.
• Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) Launch: new core questions and system implemented in four colleges and schools, with four more lined up to launch in spring 2026. CIT professionals behind the curtain:
  • Michelle Jackson
  • Preslava Staneva
  • John Udall
• Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Implemented: migrated 300 servers to Nutanix in just 14 weeks, retiring legacy VMware and SAN systems, saving $800K in licensing fees and positioning Cornell for scalable, cost-effective infrastructure.
• Server Backup Modernization Completed: wrapped up multi-year migration, partnering with distributed IT teams and cutting VM recovery time from days to minutes.
• President's Awards AV Team Shines: our amazing AV teams flawlessly supported the first-ever President's Awards for Employee Excellence simulcast—connecting Ithaca, WCM at NYC, and Qatar celebrations and earning universal praise. Truly a One Cornell moment! Shout outs to:
  • Chris Chichester
  • Kenny Christianson
  • Liam Fitch
  • Jeff Hodges
  • Gianni Renna

Awesome teamwork!

Celebrate 17 Recent Cybersecurity Successes

Beyond a single team, unit, or platform, Cornell's cybersecurity and risk mitigation successes depend on every community member doing their part. Here are 17 of the initiatives you've helped the ITSO team achieve this year: 

• Awareness & Compliance
  • Cybersecurity Training & Attestation: Professionally developed and delivered by a cross-divisional team spanning the experts in the IT Security Office, Communications & Documentation, Customer Relationship Management, Human Resources, Office of the General Counsel, and Data & Analytics groups. Achieved near-100% compliance for employees—a rare accomplishment for a private R1 institution.
  • Phishing Simulation: Implemented Cornell’s first institution-wide phishing simulations with five campaigns completed, providing critical insight into human vulnerabilities.
• Infrastructure & Threat Monitoring
  • Crowdstrike Extended: Negotiated $1.2M in free services for 24/7 threat monitoring and mitigation for three years.
  • Security Operations: Managed a challenging year of cyberattacks, including phishing-related password compromises and urgent life-safety requests—often after hours.
  • Splunk Consolidation: Increased efficiency and visibility by consolidating disparate instances across CIT and distributed units.
  • Endpoint Vulnerability Management: Implemented Cornell’s first institution-wide tool (Tenable) for proactive endpoint security.
• Identity & Access Security
  • CUWebLogin Enhancements: Improved resilience and performance for Cornell’s most-used system.
  • Password Standards: Raised minimum requirements to support best-practice passphrases.
  • Duo Security Enhancements: Removed SMS and phone options to strengthen authentication—supported thousands of users through this transition.
• Email & Communication Security
  • DMARC Enhancements: Enabled anti-impersonation protections to reduce spoofing and safeguard Cornell’s reputation. The acronym stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, an email security protocol.
• Research & Compliance Support
  • Regulated Research Enclave: Delivered a secure, extensible environment for social sciences research—the first on the Ithaca campus.
  • Human Subject Research & Grants: Provided security and compliance expertise for Research Administration, including support for the new Export Compliance and Security Officer.
  • GLBA & HIPAA Assessments: Completed external compliance assessments in partnership with Internal Audit, Privacy Office, and Enrollment Management. Both laws concern data protection. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires organizations handling financial data to safeguard customer information. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act governs the privacy and security of health information.
• Enterprise Systems & Innovation
  • Secure Connect Dashboard: Enabled units to monitor Passkey adoption—over 4,000 users protected and 14 units already meeting FY26 goals.
  • Enterprise Directory Upgrade: Fully upgraded LDAP with zero disruption to mission-critical authentication systems.
• Exercises & Preparedness
  • Largest Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise: Partnered with Verizon to host Cornell’s biggest virtual exercise yet—100+ attendees, positive reviews, and valuable lessons learned.
  • Expanded E-Discovery: partnered with multiple working groups to tackle a demanding year of e-discovery requests.

Transitions

Cheers to these team members on their new/additional roles and supervisors:

• Ayham Boucher – Assistant Program Director for AI, reporting to Ben Maddox
• Abe Canfield – IT Service Desk Level 2, reporting to Bob Rowe
• Jason Eldridge – Security Operations Engineer, reporting to Glenn Larratt
• Erica Ellis – Assistant Director for Strategic Business Enablement, reporting to Becky Joffrey
• Ryan Engels – Acting Tech Lead, AV Engineering & Project Management, reporting to Mike Allmendinger
• Christina Hopkins – Primary Windows Support Engineer, reporting to Scott Sorrentino
• David Nelson – Strategic Business Enablement Project Coordinator, reporting to Erica Ellis
• Dan Paolangeli – Acting Tech Lead, AV Installation & Support, reporting to Mike Allmendinger
• Ester Soriano – Assistant Director for Strategic Engagement and Business Systems Integration, reporting to Stephen Burke
• James Vanee – Service Manager of Apps on Demand (part-time), reporting to Kris Barth
• Sean Walsh – Interim Assistant Director for Cloud and Infrastructure Services, reporting to Sarah Christen
• Fang Xu – Assistant Director for Finance, reporting to Daniel Splitgerber

Your growth inspires us all!

Milestones & Memories

With gratitude and admiration, we celebrate:

• Chris Manly – moved to Internet2 after 20 years in CIT on 9/30/2025

Onward and upward!

Recommend Monthly Kudos

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• Open a Comm & Doc team ticket.
• Choose "Recognition."
• Add a comment with the person or team name and 3-10 words capturing their recent kudos-worthy moment.