Northwestern joined four other Big Ten universities Wednesday in launching a joint cybersecurity operations center, according to a news release.

NU, Indiana University, Purdue University, Rutgers University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln launched OmniSOC — a specialized, sector-based cybersecurity operations center — to provide “rapid, actionable cyber intelligence,” according to the release.

OmniSOC — based at Indiana University — aims to help higher education institutions reduce the time from first awareness of a cybersecurity threat to mitigation everywhere for its members, the release noted.

OmniSOC uses two decades of experience from IU’s Global Research Network Operations Center, which provides services to the government, research and education sectors across the country, according to the release.

The organization uses real-time security information data feeds from each member campus and government and corporate security subscriptions to identify suspicious activity. OmniSOC will use both human analysis and machine learning to provide incident response, the release noted.

Tom Davis, a founder and the chief information security officer of OmniSOC, said in the release that OmniSOC plans to expand membership beyond the Big Ten Academic Alliance as the organization grows.

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