Cyber City, USA News

In her first year competing in CyberPatriot, high school senior Narda Mendez wanted to be on the boys team. Instead she is one of six members of San Antonio's first all-girls team, which is gearing up to participate in the national high school cybersecurity competition.
The squad from Southwest High School is one of four teams from the school and one of 55 teams from the San Antonio area that will compete in the annual tournament.
Arthur Celestin, the team coach and a computers teacher at the high school, said the idea to assemble a squad made up of girls was something he thinks will help draw more women into the information technology industry.
“It's a challenge to recruit girls into an IT program,” he...

Gen. Keith Alexander, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, today bluntly addressed widespread cyberattacks hitting major corporations and the damaging loss of intellectual property being harvested from their computer networks.
“From my perspective, this is huge,” Alexander said at a symposium sponsored by the computer security firm Symantec. “When we look out there – the companies that have been hit – you look across the board: Everybody’s getting hit.
“In 2012, just some of them — Nissan, MasterCard and Visa: That should make all of us concerned,” Alexander said. “[In] 2011, RSA, COMODO, Epsilon, L-3, Sony, Citi, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Google, Booz...

November 07, 2012 — CSO — The nation's top national security leaders have convinced President Obama and much of the leadership in Congress that the U.S. is at risk of a "Cyber Pearl Harbor" or "Digital 9/11" if it does not take drastic measures to improve both defensive and offensive cybersecurity capabilities against hostile nation states.

But the leaders, Defense (DoD) Secretary Leon Panetta and Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano have not, however, convinced every expert in the cybersecurity community, and there is now some increasingly vocal push-back from some of them.

Critics argue argue that not only is the threat of a catastrophic cyberattack greatly exaggerated, but that the best way...

South Carolina government executives' response to breach shows how non-tech leadership often views security through a distorted lens
DarkReading.com, 1 Nov 2012

By Ericka Chickowski

Beyond the raw statistics coming out of the South Carolina state government offices around a breach of its tax records that exposed the sensitive details of millions, Governor Nikki Haley and her non-technical senior executives have tried to dole out a measure of information about the breach and citizen credit remediation through a series of press conferences this week. A good faith effort to be sure, security pundits say, but one whose content may also hint at how South Carolina may have gotten in this mess in the first...

Texas A&M University-San Antonio has completed a project connecting its new campus on the South Side with a broadband fiber optic cable.

The project was funded with a $6.6 million grant from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In addition, $3 million dollars in matching funds came from TTVN, the enterprise data and interactive communications network that serves the Texas A&M University System, and from VTX Communications LLC, the South Texas telecommunications company that worked with TTVN.

Dr. Maria Hernandez Ferrier, president of Texas A&M University-San Antonio, said the new fiber optic cable will put the university in a position...

On October 26, Texas A&M University-San Antonio hosted an all-day meeting of colleges and universities from across the state focused on sharing information on their information assurance and cybersecurity programs. The National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jointly sponsor the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE/IAE), IA 2-year Education and Training (CAE/2Y) and IA Research (CAE/R) programs. The goal of these programs is to reduce vulnerability in our national information infrastructure by promoting higher education and research in IA and producing a growing number of professionals with IA expertise in various disciplines.

The Greater...

By Valentino Lucio

The Alamo City usually is an importer when it comes to technology innovation. But with expansion in mind, San Antonio-based Geekdom is looking at taking a slice of South Texas to the world's technology hub.
Geekdom, a collaborative tech workspace in downtown San Antonio, is close to signing a deal with a tech company in San Francisco that would allow it to expand its dominion into the heart of the tech world there.
The expansion reinforces the organization's push to help tech startups and develop a tech workforce through collaboration and educational efforts, said Nick Longo, director of Geekdom in San Antonio.
“Normally, this goes in the other direction,” Longo said. “Normally,...

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The CIAS was formally launched in 2001 through a cooperative effort of representatives from industry, government, and academia. We are designed to leverage the Infrastructure Assurance and Security (IAS strengths resident in San Antonio, Texas as part of the solution to the nation’s Homeland Security. The CIAS has developed a robust set of Security Training courses designed to address security issues from the beginner to the IA professional. These
courses are ready for delivery and can be customized to meet an organization’s unique cyber security needs. Our instructors are highly qualified and maintain currency in the security field. Our capabilities include an onsite classroom located at the CIAS...