Founding Director of Oklahoma Christian University’s cybersecurity program, Curtis Coleman, has been designated a finalist for the On Conferences (OnCon) Top 100 Information Security Professionals award.
OnCon awards are peer and community voted, representing top individuals and teams worldwide according to the official website.
Coleman attributes his anonymous nomination to his community activities in 2025.
“Somewhere along the line, in 2025, someone decided to nominate me for this award,” Coleman said. “I don’t know who it was.”
Coleman said that after leaving the corporate world in 2018, he shifted his focus to getting Oklahoma Christian recognized as a National Center of Academic Excellence for Cybersecurity Education by the National Security Agency.
“I’m doing it for both the school, my students and also the community,” Coleman said. “As I started doing that, I started speaking at conferences, and I usually go to about five a year now — cybersecurity conferences where I’m a keynote speaker.”
Coleman said he receives calls from other professionals seeking advice regarding major projects.
“Whenever there’s some major project happening, I’ll get a phone call and people ask me, you know, do I know how to do this and things like that,” Coleman said. “I have a broad set of skills that can help them.”
Coleman was asked to join the governor of Oklahoma’s strategic advisory board two years ago.
“I got on that, and I started developing the strategy for Oklahoma as a state,” Coleman said. “How do we handle cybersecurity at K-12 in rural areas? How do we help hospitals?”
OnCon awards are peer-voted, meaning anyone affected by Coleman’s far-reaching career, including professors and students at Oklahoma Christian, has a chance to influence the outcome.
“What I like about it is it’s designed to include your peers,” Coleman said. “Not only your professional cybersecurity peers, but also your colleagues that you work with at the university, your students, the hospitals I’ve been helping and other organizations I help. All of them get to vote. It’s open to everybody who might have been influenced by what we’re doing here at OC.”
Coleman said his nomination for the award reflects positively on the quality of Oklahoma Christian’s cybersecurity program.
“I do see this as representing the whole university and how we approach cybersecurity in our community and our students professionally,” Coleman said. “We produce high quality, outstanding students who are skilled; they have gained wisdom and knowledge over the four years of going through our program. Now, they’re being placed strategically — I believe by God — into key sectors that will influence the future of our national and economic defense.”
As of January, Cybersecurity Guide designated Oklahoma Christian’s undergraduate Computer Science with Cybersecurity as third in the nation.
Coleman said he is honored to appear with his peers on the list of nearly 500 finalists.
“To be counted with those peers, I mean, it’s just really exciting for me, but also honoring because it’s all because of the work that we do here at Oklahoma Christian University.”
Coleman said he recognized several names on the list.
“Some of the people on the list are people that I’ve mentored for multiple years,” Coleman said. “That’s so exciting because they’re people that work for me or I’ve mentored or they have different ways we’ve crossed paths.”
Coleman said he wants his students to be excited about the program.
“I was like, okay, get my students excited about it, because they got a professor who is recognized in the industry helping them get jobs and continue to grow the Kingdom,” Coleman said. “I do believe that this is God’s way of blessing our program and helping it to expand and be recognized nationally.”
People who have been positively impacted by Coleman’s work can place votes here to support him until voting closes Feb. 15.
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