UMass Lowell has opened a new Cyber Security Operations Center on the fourth floor of the Wannalancit Mills building on Suffolk Street, giving local governments, nonprofits and businesses a place to turn for expert cybersecurity guidance while training a new generation of digital defenders. The center arrives more than three years after a 2023 cyberattack knocked out Lowell's municipal phones, email and financial systems, a crisis city officials are still invoking as they explain why the facility matters now.
A Response Rooted in Lowell's Own Hack
The timing is not incidental. According to the Lowell Sun, Lowell Mayor Erik Gitschier said the 2023 cyberattack caused real disruption for the city and that UMass Lowell's involvement will help increase confidence going forward, adding that the center's resources can help organizations monitor, detect and respond to cyber threats. That 2023 incident, first reported by CBS News, began early on April 24, 2023, when servers, networks, phones and other systems throughout the city became inaccessible; officials said at the time that 911 and other emergency numbers were not impacted and there was no reason to believe data had been breached. That initial assessment did not hold. The ransomware group Play later claimed responsibility, and the Lowell Sun reported that 5 gigabytes of stolen data were posted to the dark web that May. By September 2023, the Lowell Sun reported the attack had knocked out phones, email, financial, human resources, asset management and revenue systems, and that it exposed security vulnerabilities in modems police used to access internal databases, with one official noting the modems were not secure.
Inside the New Cyber Security Operations Center
UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen said the center supports cyber resilience while training future professionals, and that cybercriminals and defenders are in a constant back-and-forth, with offense expanding and defenses needing to keep pace. The facility was established with a $300,000 grant, with funding provided jointly by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's MassCyberCenter, according to UMass Lowell. The university's own earlier announcement, via UMass Lowell, said the center would give area governments, nonprofits and businesses expert guidance while providing students with paid, career-connected experience, and noted that defense contractor SAIC awarded the university $1.3 million toward development of the broader cyber center, which is estimated to help create 30 jobs.
The center is part of CyberTrust Massachusetts and sits within the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor. Per the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's MassCyberCenter, which confirmed it provided UMass Lowell a $300,000 grant in October 2025, the center is meant to provide cybersecurity resiliency and compliance support for the Defense Industrial Base supply chain. CyberTrust Massachusetts operates the UMass Lowell center alongside three other similar facilities across the state, the university's reporting notes.
Student Interns Doing Real Defense Work
Five UMass Lowell students are currently interning with CyberTrust Massachusetts at the Suffolk Street center, analyzing suspicious activity, working alongside cybersecurity professionals to mitigate attacks, and developing business reports using the programming language Python, the university says. Alexandra Fabian, a UMass Lowell senior and one of those interns, has worked for CyberTrust for two months, focusing on day-to-day operations of the SOC and converting complex technical data into clear summaries for clients. She said she plans to move into healthcare cybersecurity after graduating, protecting sensitive patient data. CyberTrust Massachusetts hires new interns four times a year, in March, June, September and December, with each internship lasting six months.
Ben Linville-Engler, MassTech Collaborative's deputy director, framed the center's mission in broader terms, saying cybersecurity is economic security and that the state's digital systems face ongoing cyber challenges. He said Massachusetts aims to establish a new era for its defense and national security ecosystem, and that MassTech envisions extending that kind of support to small- and medium-sized businesses as well.
A Statewide Cybersecurity Challenge
The center is intended to provide cybersecurity support to organizations, while budget challenges can complicate those efforts. U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan said the center represents the next chapter in Lowell's innovation history and noted that Massachusetts residents experienced nearly 4.5 million data-breach impacts in 2024. She described the facility as designed to support small- and medium-sized defense companies specifically.
Trahan also described the Suffolk Street facility as the fifth center of its kind in Massachusetts, according to the Lowell Sun's reporting, while UMass Lowell's own 2025 announcement had called the planned SOC the fourth such facility at colleges and universities across the commonwealth. The discrepancy between those two counts was not resolved in either account. UMass Lowell and SAIC had previously signed an agreement to establish a cyber center in the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor, with that partnership designed to expand the regional STEM workforce through paid internships, job fairs and training programs, the university said in a 2024 announcement.
