Several WVNET staff members participated in a cybersecurity workshop held at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center on April 18. The objective of the West Virginia workshop was to develop West Virginia specific recommendations to strengthen West Virginia local and state government cybersecurity governance and to facilitate cybersecurity partnering between West Virginia local governments and West Virginia state government. The workshop was part of the George Mason-National Science Foundation Cybersecurity City and County Cross Jurisdictional Collaboration project, having the goal of furthering U.S. city and county cybersecurity efforts by developing foundations and policies that enable and foster city and county cybersecurity partnerships.
The workshop included talks by: Josh Spence, West Virginia Chief Technology Officer; Ron Hamilton, CISO and Eric Burgy, Telecom Manager, WVNET; and Greg Herbold, Director, U.S. State/Local Government and Education (SLED), Palo Alto Networks. Ron Hamilton, WVNET CISO, (pictured) presented on Cybersecurity and WVNET. Ron discussed the importance of education and a partnership with the NSF Cybersecurity Center for Excellence for an NSF Grant. Using this grant, WVNET staff will be trained in Cybersecurity for Research, and training materials will be provided that can be used to train WVNET customers (Train the Trainer).