State and federal agencies and industry groups on Tuesday staffed “war rooms” focused on monitoring and responding to the latest threats to the administration of an election that saw disinformation campaigns, threats from foreign governments, sweeping changes to how people cast ballots and, in just the past few weeks, record-busting early voting. One of those war rooms is running out of an office park in East Greenbush, New York, home to the Center for Internet Security, which operates the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the federally backed entity that distributes threat intelligence to election administrators and helps state and local governments backstop their voting-related IT systems. Ben Freed interviewed the director.

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University pairs with MSFT for talent pipeline

The University of Houston has partnered with Microsoft in a new initiative to train students and professionals across Texas in digital and technical skills to create new economic opportunity. The Microsoft Accelerate program, launched in collaboration with the University of Houston College of Technology, as well as several other education organizations, including the Texas Education Agency, Dallas Independent School District and the nonprofit National Math and Science Initiative, will develop several training programs to address STEM engagement for K-12 students, professional development for educators, workforce development for high school and college students, as well as working professionals looking to enhance their business and technical skills. Betsy Foresman has the latest.

How cyber pros are responding to a Finnish breach

The extortion of a prominent Finnish psychotherapy center holds lessons for people in just about every industry. At issue are the obligations of health care organizations to defend their computer networks, and victims’ ability to hold organizations accountable for failing to do so. The organization, Vastaamo, was breached two years ago but the case escalated in recent weeks as scammers began trying to capitalize on the stolen patient data. Sean Lyngaas examines the workforce ramifications.

CISA begins work on national network of cyber institutes

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has begun work on a national network of cybersecurity technical institutes. Together with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, CISA awarded $2 million to the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute to develop a plan for the institutes. The institutes would help meet federal and nationwide cyber workforce needs highlighted in a DHS-Department of Commerce joint report — namely that there were about 299,000 cyber openings as of August 2017 with that number only expected to grow. Dave Nyczepir has more.

How coronavirus forced cyber changes at DHS

In a video interview, Karen Evans, the chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, address the cybersecurity workforce gaps, and how DHS is looking for a skill mix to help with their initiatives to consolidate what is happening from a network operation center and security operation center perspective. Part of what is helping DHS is that they have been given authority to put employees on a career path that mirrors the private sector, both for salary and job path. Watch here.

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Supervisory IT Specialist |Department of Veterans Affairs

This position provides overall senior-level technical vision/direction and perform technical duties in support of all Portfolio Program and Project activities as described in the subsequent sections.Also responsible for providing overall senior technical guidance tasks to support capability delivery covering design, development, component/multi-system integration, cyber security, network infrastructure and communications, cloud infrastructure, database technologies, application and operating system technologies, and handheld/mobile technologies. See this job and others here.