What better way to celebrate National Cybersecurity Awareness Month than by featuring an employee whose main responsibility is to keep our systems safe from ever-changing cyber threats! GUC has a team of employees in the Information Technology (IT) Department who oversee network and data security, and for this story, we were pointed in the direction of James Hoover, IT Systems Analyst II.

James has been with GUC for four years as part of IT’s Infrastructure Team. In a nutshell, they make sure the servers are tuned, enough storage is available, and the network functions properly. They each have their specialties and individual roles on top of their overall team responsibilities.

 “At the risk of sounding corny, I like the thrill of the hunt,” said James, when asked what he likes best about his job. “When I come across something odd, I dive into interpreting and figuring out what’s going on. I really enjoy that part of my job, especially when it comes to adversarial thinking, which is asking, ‘how would the bad guy do it?’.”

What exactly is he hunting? Simply put, he’s looking for bad guys (or rather, the product of bad guys). A lot of what he does is network anomaly monitoring and investigating, which means he’s looking for abnormalities, glitches, or changes in our IT network traffic and evaluating whether or not they are good, bad, or indifferent.

James also does vulnerability assessments and remediation with our network and various systems (like WAM and EBS). He uses different tools to determine if there are weaknesses that need to be “hardened.” A great example is the upcoming Windows 10 installment that our computers will undergo. “By default, most products don’t roll out of the box as secure as we need them to be, so I’ve worked on a framework to make Windows 10 more secure for our employees,” he said. “With the additional framework, it will be harder for an employee to accidentally do something that exposes GUC to harm from outside of our network.”

Two other aspects of James’ system security responsibilities include project recommendations, and risk and threat analysis.  When IT receives a request for a new tool or system enhancement, James helps determine if and how those requests can be done without compromising GUC’s network.

He also runs risk and threat analysis on Homeland Security bulletins about cyber threats targeting utilities. “I profile each threat to determine the level of risk to GUC,” said James. “If there is anything to the threat, I make recommendations on how to mitigate those risks.” In other words, he’s making it harder for the bad guys to mess with our information, network, and critical systems.

Speaking of bad guys, James could probably give them a hard time physically as well (but let’s hope we never have to find out). In his spare time, he enjoys martial arts, in particular Mauy Thai (a type of boxing), and on occasion, heading to the shooting range. He also enjoys long boarding and his Vulcan S motorcycle.

James and his wife, DeAnna, an engineer with Hyster-Yale, enjoy camping, searching out craft beer, and traveling. Wilmington is one of their favorite places to visit. Originally from Knightdale, James moved to Greenville to attend ECU, where he received his undergraduate degree in Information Computer Technology with a concentration in Network Security. He also has a Masters in Cybersecurity from Capitol Technology University. He joined GUC as an intern during his final semester at ECU, and was hired to his current job after graduation.

A big thank you to James for giving us a little insight into how the IT Department works extra hard to keep the “bad guys” out of our network.

Favorite Book - The Dresden Files series
Favorite Podcast - Astonishing Legends
Favorite Movie - Serenity
Favorite TV Show - Bob’s Burgers