Army Cyber Command officially opened its new headquarters last week. Fortitude Hall, located at Fort Gordon near Augusta, Georgia, is the new home for the Army’s hacking, cyberdefense and information warfare arm. The hall was dedicated Thursday after the Army’s years of planning to move its cyber specialists to a central headquarters. Fort Gordon is also home to the Army Signals Corps, Cyber Center of Excellence and other network security-focused programs, which will allow the command to collaborate with mission partners. Jackson Barnett has more.

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How to fill those other government cybersecurity jobs

It's no secret that filling the government's open cybersecurity roles has been a persistent and intractable problem over the past decade. To combat this shortfall, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission released a white paper on Tuesday that looks to address this challenge and reemphasize how critical filling those positions should be. Among the suggestions: continuing the development of career pathways and providing interesting career development opportunities like rotational and exchange programs, allowing people to try out the private sector before coming back into a government job. Read the paper here.

Finding a happy medium

As federal agencies pursue long-term IT modernization, they must be mindful of the potential for emerging technologies like quantum computing to disrupt current security paradigms, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat said Tuesday. Quantum computing will likely invalidate certain encryption methodologies in the next decade, and federal systems must evolve to support new ones and the way that will change the workforce, Roat said during the Billington Cybersecurity Summit. Investing in modern zero-trust security architectures and flexible, scalable cloud-solutions has become even more important so agencies can configure their platforms to capitalize on emerging technologies down the line. “Even as I’m modernizing some of our old systems, our legacy systems, I have to make sure that our current systems as well are keeping up,” Roat said. Dave Nyczepir has more.

Keep contracting officers in the loop

As the Social Security Administration modernizes its IT enterprise, it should better identify roles for contracting officials in the agile software development process, according to the Government Accountability Office. SSA has an agile process in place, but its IT modernization projects continue to see delays due to the murky roles of contracting officials, the GAO says in a new report. “SSA officials told us they did not think they needed to specify the roles given that the contractors were only responsible for providing services,” GAO says. “However, according to leading practices for agile adoption, key roles in agile IT development include the program office, product owner, contracting personnel, and development team.” Dave has more.

Fronting the bill

The North Dakota Information Technology Department announced Wednesday it will cover the registration fees for up to 25 schools participating in CyberPatriot, a national cybersecurity competition run by the Air Force to generate interest in technology careers. The competition, which challenges and middle school and high school students to find and patch vulnerabilities in a virtual operating system, is held annually to help fill a global cybersecurity workforce gap. “Especially in the current environment, with e-learning, with virtual learning being so prevalent, this just gives kids a great opportunity to explore their affinity for these topics and to do it in a fun way as a competition,” NDIT spokesperson Kelly Ivahnenko told StateScoop. “NDIT believes that our ability to help offset the cost just eliminates a potential barrier and makes it easier for teachers and classes to get involved.” Colin Wood has more.

Job of the Day

Lead IT Specialist (DATAMGT/INFOSEC) | Department of Transportation

The person will serve as the department’s Data Governance Lead within the Office of the Assistant Chief Information Officer for Data Services and Chief Data Officer (CDO), and be assigned overall responsibility for leading the Departmental data governance program and driving data compliance across the Department. Learn more here.