Boise State strives to lead cybersecurity preparedness for Idaho and the nation – The Arbiter

Boise State University’s leaders in cybersecurity shared their work to improve cyber awareness and develop a ready-to-work cybersecurity workforce to fight cyber threats at the Annual Preparedness and Cybersecurity Conference, which occurred Oct. 11-13 in Boise. Ransomware attacks, malicious hacking and government-sponsored cyber attacks dominated discussion topics.

Ed Vasko, director of the Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity (IPC) and member of the Division of Research and Economic Development at Boise State University, envisions Idaho as the future national hub for cybersecurity.

“So why Boise? All the elements — the business support, the support from Idaho Tech Council, the support from local government, from state government, the growing tech community that’s here, everything’s right,” Vasko said. “And then you sprinkle into that an innovative university like Boise State that is recognizing there’s a better way to do this and to engage with industry … help craft and adjust curricula, build platforms and create pathways for our students so that our industry partners know that they can come to us and accelerate their growth.” 

Dependence upon computer networks and internet connectivity combined with the weakest link, human operation, enables criminals to access networks and cause catastrophic damage. Cybersecurity experts at the conference agreed that top priorities for disaster preparedness are cybercrime and cyber warfare, citing the ransomware attack which resulted in a six-day shutdown of gas and the jet fuel supply from the Colonial Pipeline to the southeastern U.S. in 2021.

Speakers from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned cyberattacks represent the future face of warfare, citing Russia’s cyberattacks accompanying their conventional military invasion of Ukraine in February.

Vasko raised the shortage of cybersecurity-trained workers to fill hundreds of thousands of unfilled job openings as a big challenge to achieving adequate nationwide cybersecurity. There are more than 760,000 cybersecurity jobs nationwide, over 6,700 in Idaho,…