About Erik

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Erik Surwill

I am an IT Director and technology executive with more than twenty-five years of experience designing, modernizing, and governing mission-critical IT environments in regulated healthcare settings.

I began my career in hands-on IT consulting and support, building a strong technical foundation in Cisco networking, security architecture, and voice systems. Over the past decade, I moved into executive IT leadership, where I direct enterprise infrastructure, compliance programs, vendor governance, and strategic technology planning for a leading children’s mental health organization in Los Angeles.

In addition to this operational leadership and responsibility, I provide fractional CIO and CISO advisory services to organizations under substantial regulatory, legal, and contractual pressure. I work to resolve that pressure through architecting and implementing environments that meet the relevant legal/regulatory requirements, impose minimum complexity on the support staff who run them, and facilitate the collection of related audit data.

I specialize in regulated healthcare environments and I have deep expertise in managing the complexities of HIPAA, HITECH, the 21st Century Cures Act, and California privacy regulations. I am experienced in Los Angeles County and public-sector contractual alignment, translating complex contractual exhibit language and compliance obligations into practical technical controls and operational workflows.

My executive portfolio includes:

  • SOC 2/ NIST/HIPAA crosswalk and control implementation

  • Vendor governance and contract negotiation leadership

  • Enterprise risk assessment and compliance program design

  • Cloud modernization and SASE architecture leadership

  • EHR platform strategy and regulatory integration oversight

  • ITIL-aligned service management development

I can translate technical complexity into strategic clarity for your executive leadership and boards. I believe technology must deliver measurable utility and regulatory assurance, and must reduce or eliminate operational friction for the people who use it. The tooling and the processes shaping IT infrastructure have changed continuously across those twenty-five years. What has not changed are my standards of service and my willingness to stand behind my work. This remains the cornerstone of my practice.