The National Security Agency and the Pentagon have a new initiative meant to increase access to cybersecurity education, mentoring and paid internships for students at historically Black colleges and universities. The workforce development program, called the Cybersecurity Education Diversity Initiative (CEDI), will connect students at eligible educational institutions with the Maryland Innovation & Security Institute’s virtual cyber range to gain hands-on technical training as well as internships and mentorship through the Pentagon’s Office of Small Business Programs. Shannon Vavra covered the news.

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West Virginia to move state employees to Google Workspace

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice just announced that the state’s executive branch agencies will start using Google’s suite of cloud-based productivity and collaboration applications as their main business software. The migration, which is part of a multi-year agreement between the state and Google, is expected to affect about 22,000 employees. Justice’s office also said the move will save the state government about $11.5 million. Benjamin Freed has more at StateScoop.

How TikTok complements its security staff

TikTok is expanding its in-house vulnerability disclosure program into a bug bounty partnership with HackerOne, the video-sharing app announced Thursday morning. Researchers will be able to make up to nearly $15,000 for critical vulnerabilities. TikTok's announcement comes one day after the latest court filings over a proposed U.S. ban of the app. Tim Starks has the latest.

Meet the Army's new chief data officer

The Army has a new top data officer, David Markowitz, who will lead the service’s efforts to implement Department of Defense data strategies as the military looks to turn data into a warfighting tool. Markowitz replaced Greg Garcia, who in addition to serving as CDO was dual-hatted as the acting deputy chief information officer of the Army. The Army recently reconfigured some of its top technology jobs. Now, the department’s IT is lead by a senior civilian in the deputy CIO role and a three-star general leading military technology issues, titled the deputy chief of staff of the G-6. Jackson Barnett makes the introduction.

The NSA's new learning tool is public

The NSA has created a new platform called SkillTree that is designed to teach the best ways to use complex applications and implement best practices in software development. It’s a tool and not a specific curriculum. The spy agency developed it in-house but posted it to the Microsoft-owned public code repository GitHub with ways for the broader development community to collaborate on its code and fix bugs. Jackson explains the project.

Job of the Day

Supervisory IT Specialist |Department of Health and Human Services

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking a Supervisory IT Specialist located at the Red Lake Service Unit, Department of Information Management, Red Lake, Minnesota. Responsibilities include managing, planning, developing, monitoring, and directing the Service Unit computer and telecommunications systems. The position is also expected to provide administrative and technical supervision to IT staff and assign/prioritize tasks to staff for conducting day-to-day operations, among other responsibilities. See this job and others here.