{"id":199812,"date":"2026-03-27T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/27\/mississippi-lawmakers-approve-security-operations-center-centralizing-it-services\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T16:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:10:12","slug":"mississippi-lawmakers-approve-security-operations-center-centralizing-it-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/27\/mississippi-lawmakers-approve-security-operations-center-centralizing-it-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi lawmakers approve security operations center, centralizing IT services"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mississippi lawmakers approve security operations center, centralizing IT services<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/statescoop.com\/mississippi-cybersecurity-operations-center-shared-services\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-27 16:03:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: statescoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

If Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signs a bill that was sent to his desk on Friday, the state will form its first cybersecurity operations center, a response to an increasing number of digital threats targeting state governments, or what one Mississippi lawmaker this month referred to as \u201call this stuff going on around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Mississippi houses this month approved the legislation to create a State Security Operations Center inside the state\u2019s technology bureau, the Department Of Information Technology Services. The bill would create a cross-agency meeting point similar to those found in other states, \u201can operational arm of statewide cybersecurity,\u201d according to a conference committee report, and an inlet for fresh cybersecurity talent.<\/p>\n

Craig Orgeron, the state\u2019s chief information officer and head of ITS, said in an emailed statement that the SOC\u2019s creation \u201cmarks a significant step forward in our ability to protect the citizens and infrastructure of Mississippi from cyber threats.\u201d He thanked the governor and legislature, noting that \u201ctogether with our partners, we now have an operational foundation to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats more effectively than ever before. This is a shared responsibility, and we are ready to meet it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Bart Williams, a Republican who cosponsored the bill, explained in a hearing last month that cybersecurity \u201ccould be one of the biggest threats our state faces.\u201d During legislative hearings, Williams said there was no question the state needed a SOC and that the only question was where to put it. He estimated the cost to the state would be roughly $3 million. Explaining the center\u2019s placement under the state\u2019s technology department, he noted that \u201cwe don\u2019t need duplicity. We don\u2019t need two or three SOCs. This would be a single one.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Questions of how to organize IT in Mississippi have in recent months attracted greater attention from state leaders. A bill proposed this year by state Sen. Scott DeLano, a Republican, would have created a separate, new department dedicated to cybersecurity. When another senator asked DeLano whether such a department wouldn\u2019t overlap with the work already being done by ITS, he replied that it was \u201can attempt to help on the law enforcement side.\u201d That bill died in committee last month, but the SOC may be a workable answer to the same question: how best to coordinate many parties in response to quick-moving digital threats.<\/p>\n

Mississippi\u2019s governor this month approved another bill altering the role of Orgeron\u2019s department \u2014 the Mississippi IT Optimization Act is the state\u2019s latest stab at centralizing the administration of more of its services and reducing overlapping contracts across dozens of agencies. The legislation directs a council of agency CIOs to advise ITS on how to reduce duplicative services and to set standards that state technology systems must meet. Williams, who also co-sponsored this bill, estimated that a single consolidation \u2014 of 31 Microsoft email licenses \u2014 would save the state as much as $2 million.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hob Bryan, a 73-year-old Democrat who has served longer in Mississippi\u2019s upper chamber than any other member, last month said he was skeptical that the IT consolidation bill would succeed where other attempts have failed, pointing to the formation of ITS itself: \u201cI think our procurement of computer services and technology is beyond dysfunctional.\u201d Williams agreed that he had heard \u201chorror stories\u201d of Mississippi agencies struggling to procure new technology, but that \u201cthe ITS world is different than it was when a lot of statutes were put in place. \u2026 We have a federated model that we use in the State of Mississippi and IT is something that needs to be centralized.\u201d In an email, Orgeron agreed: \u201cWe now have the authority and framework to eliminate duplication, modernize our systems, and deliver better services.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Mississippi is trying to centralize its cybersecurity operations and its technology services, it\u2019s also trying to pool more of its data. A bill approved by the governor last year directed ITS to study how best to create a \u201cstatewide data exchange,\u201d a task for which the technology bureau last September contracted the help of Gartner Consulting. In a presentation to a legislative committee this month, Usman Tareen, a managing partner for AI and technology strategy with Gartner, said that in interviewing 17 state agencies, he learned that while Mississippi was solid on data security, but that \u201cbecause of that protectionism, it creates silos. \u2026 There is point-to-point data integration between agencies, but that\u2019s basically replicating the same data from one agency to another agency. There is no fluidity of data movement between different agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the keystone position that ITS will play in all three efforts \u2014 cybersecurity, centralizing services and enabling more data-sharing \u2014 Mississippi\u2019s CIO is only the highest ranking official of ITS, not a Cabinet-level official who reports directly to the governor. A bill that would have elevated Mississippi\u2019s CIO role died in committee this month, though it\u2019s not clear why, based on the testimony given publicly during legislative hearings. (Orgeron declined to comment on this legislation.) DeLano, the bill\u2019s sponsor, told members of the Senate\u2019s government structure committee that he\u2019d been working on the idea \u201cfor years,\u201d inspired by widespread tales of frustration he\u2019d heard from agencies dealing with cybersecurity and general IT issues. The \u201cbest way\u201d to ensure technology is managed properly, he said, is to ensure the state\u2019s top technology official is present \u201cat the table at all agency head meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\tWritten by Colin Wood
\n\t\t\tColin Wood is StateScoop’s editor in chief. Contact him at colin.wood@statescoop.com or cwood.64 on Signal.\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mississippi lawmakers approve security operations center, centralizing IT services https:\/\/statescoop.com\/mississippi-cybersecurity-operations-center-shared-services\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-27 16:03:00 Source…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/07\/IMG_8171_1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,24,28],"class_list":["post-199812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-cybersecurity","tag-data-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199814,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199812\/revisions\/199814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}