• Cybersecurity as Counterterrorism: Seeking a Better Debate

    Earlier this month, a senior Justice Department official referred to ransomware as a potential “cyber weapon of mass destruction.” When hackers subsequently disabled the Colonial Pipeline, causing fuel shortages and disruptions along the East Coast, it seemed to validate this warning. Simon Handler, Emma Schroeder, and Trey Herr, however, write that it would be a mistake for the policy establishment to double down on an outdated view of cyber conflict rooted in Cold War analogies. To improve U.S. cybersecurity, policymakers should draw instead on more relevant strategic lessons from the study of terrorism and counterterrorism.

  • Cybersecurity Becomes Increasingly Important: USC Students Train to Secure Networks, Data

    With over half a million cybersecurity job openings in the industry and with increased reliance on insecure networks and infrastructures, experts say that now more than ever, students pursuing cybersecurity degrees are essential to keeping data secure. USC’s Intelligence and Cyber Operation Program trains students to identify cybersecurity issues.

  • How the Military Might Expand Its Cyber Skills

    As software has become an ever more integral part of life, national security experts have come to recognize that the U.S. military will need to improve its software fluency if it wants to remain dominant on the battlefields of the future.

  • Help Wanted: The Cybersecurity Workforce of the Future Starts with Students Today

    Today’s critical infrastructure systems from farm fields planted with digital sensors that track soil moisture and nutrient levels to electric power grids equipped to instantly respond to digital signals about shifts in supply and demand are increasingly vulnerable to attacks that could cripple civil society, according to cybersecurity experts. Today, there are nearly 2 million U.S. job openings in the field of cybersecurity, studies indicate.

  • Georgia State’s Designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research, Education

    The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have designated Georgia State University as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research and a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education through 2025.

  • New Cybersecurity Degree Offered at UH West O’ahu

    The University of Hawaiʻi–West O’ahu has unveiled a new slate of academic offerings—including another STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degree—to address the state’s workforce needs, in time for the start of the fall 2020 semester.

  • Utah State University’s Seth Manesse Wins First Individual CyberForce Competition

    After a tough, day-long contest, Seth Manesse from Utah State University won the sixth CyberForce Competition. Each CyberForce Competition presents a real-world scenario in which participants must defend cyber-physical infrastructure against threats modeled on those faced by the energy sector today. The 2020 scenario involved a wind energy company in charge of over 20,000 megawatts of electricity generation that has been experiencing abnormal network activity.

  • UWF Re-Designated as Cybersecurity Regional Hub for the Southeast U.S., with Expanded Mission

    The University of West Florida has been re-designated by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security as the Southeast Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (CAE-C) Regional Hub. The UWF Center for Cybersecurity has served as the Southeast regional hub since 2017, providing leadership in cybersecurity education among colleges and universities in five states and Puerto Rico.

  • DHS S&T Launches Hacking for Homeland Security Program

    DHS S&T is launching Hacking for Homeland Security(H4HS)  to provide DHS with the capability to drive innovative solutions and identify future interns with applied knowledge to work on DHS mission-relevant topics.H4HSis modeled on Hacking for Defense (H4D). The national academic course is taught at 54 universities and represents a new platform for national service, teaching teams of university students how to use modern entrepreneurial tools and techniques to solve critical national security and intelligence community problems at start-up speed.

  • NSA Awards $6 Million for Cybersecurity Workforce Development

    The Purdue University Northwest (PNW) College of Technology has been awarded a grant of $5,971,053 for Cybersecurity Workforce Development from the National Security Agency (NSA). PNW says that with the funded projects, PNW will be able to contribute significantly to national workforce development in the field of AI and cybersecurity. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the need for IT and cybersecurity professionals is projected to grow 12 percent from 2018 to 2028 with multi-million shortages.

  • Macro Cyber Resilience

    The prefixes of ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ have been applied to concepts like economics, or even to activities like photography. They are easy ideas to understand in large versus small scales. However, this term is not usually used to define cyber perspectives, an increasingly important area for security applications.

  • The U.S. Government Needs to Overhaul Cybersecurity. Here’s How.

    After the 2015 hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the SolarWinds breach, and—just weeks after SolarWinds—the latest Microsoft breach, it is by now clear that the U.S. federal government is woefully unprepared in matters of cybersecurity. Jonathan Reiber and Matt Glenn write that “it is time for a different model for cybersecurity. U.S. military bases have layers of walls, guards, badge readers, and authentication measures to control access. The United States needs the same mindset for its cybersecurity.”

  • Cybersecurity Tech for Emergency Communications Centers

    DHS S&T is expanding pilot testing of a technology to improve the cybersecurity defenses of the nation’s emergency communications infrastructure. Odenton, Md.-based SecuLore Solutions in the research and development (R&D) of a cybersecurity defense solution based on predictive analytics and cyber data that helps detect and mitigate cybersecurity attacks against legacy emergency communications systems and new Next Generation 911 (NG911) and Internet Protocol-based technologies.

  • The EU Online Terrorism Regulation: A Bad Deal

    On 12 September 2018, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online—dubbed the Terrorism Regulation, or TERREG for short—that contained some alarming ideas.

  • America's Place in Cyberspace: The Biden Administration’s Cyber Strategy Takes Shape

    In cyber policy, the SolarWinds and Microsoft hacks have dominated the first weeks of President Joseph Biden’s administration. Even so, the administration has outlined its cyber strategy in speeches by President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and in the president’s Interim Strategic National Security Guidance [PDF]. The emerging strategy is anchored in, and is reflective of, the ideological, geopolitical, technological, and diplomatic pillars of Biden’s broader vision for U.S. foreign policy and national security.