Nelson Sims serves the Authority as Acting Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President. Most recently, Mr. Sims had served as Director, Cyber Security Services Security for DC Water’s Information Technology Department. Mr. Sims serves as the primary contact in support of the District of Columbia’s Water and Sewer Authority (The Authority) information security policies, standards, guidelines, processes, procedures, and best practices to strengthen the security program to protect information assets, monitor, analyze and detect security threats, and respond to security incidents in both the traditional IT Space and Operational Technology (OT) environments. Mr. Sims establishes an acceptable balance between the need to secure the Authority’s computing and information assets and the efficient and effective execution of its mission.

Additionally, Mr. Sims works with executives to prioritize security initiatives and spending based on risk management methodology, leads a network of security professionals (consultants and employees), maintains the Authority’s Cyber-Relationships with local, State, and Cyber Intelligence and Federal Law Enforcement entities, coordinates external network vulnerability testing and audit activities.

Mr. Sims is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (C|EH) and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He has 21 years of experience as an IT Security professional working in the private, military, Federal and Critical Infrastructure sectors.

Prior to joining DC Water, Mr. Sims worked as a contractor in the DOD as an Information System Security Officer, the federal Government as Incident Response Lead, and the Private sector as the Security Operations Center Lead.