Martial Arts Information

By Audrie Ramirez, Information Security Intern, UCOP. Dewight Kramer, information security consultant at UC Davis, took a five-year detour from studying philosophy and computer science to serve as a martial arts apprentice. But higher education never lost its appeal, and he resumed East Asian studies at UC Davis, while also working for the IT help desk. From there, his career took off. He held different roles in IT, including system administrator, web developer, and help desk manager. At the same time, Kramer pursued a Master of Science in information security and a little over two years ago was promoted to his current role.

Kramer said, “Increasing information security involves more than technology. It involves helping individuals by improving general awareness, updating technical skills, as well as securing data as it goes to the cloud.” His day-to-day tasks vary from consulting on new business processes, assessing risk with new and existing technologies, or improving awareness and outreach. He works with everyone from student assistants to department IT directors, from campus council to the UC Davis Privacy Officer. He highly values teamwork and working with other information security professionals across the UC system through activities such as co-chairing the UC Information Security Symposium.

Kramer believes awareness is the baseline to prevent the human errors that so often lead to an information security incident. He said good passwords and patching devices provide the basic protection against cyber-crime. On a professional level, he is especially concerned about controlling the large amount of data moving to the cloud. A common risk associated with cloud vendors and cloud hosts is clarifying who is responsible if something happens to the data. Cloud security is one of his specialties and he often consults with the procurement office and cloud vendors on behalf of campus departments. He also is very interested in cyberwar and information security in the government.

Outside of information security, he enjoys teaching martial arts on Saturday mornings and having monthly discussions and tutoring with a philosophy professor. Ever the student, he’s considering law school to advance his knowledge of legal processes related to information security and privacy.