Building Domestic Cyber Talent: Partnerships with Educational Institutions

Addressing Cyber Talent Shortages in Healthcare

• 🎯 Cybersecurity breaches are a significant challenge, particularly for rural hospitals, often stemming from a talent issue – a lack of individuals with necessary cybersecurity skills.
• 💡 Senator Jon Husted highlights Ohio's initiative of establishing cybersecurity as a high school program at career centers in partnership with businesses.
• 🤝 Miss Stevenson confirms that Norwok actively collaborates with local colleges, high schools, and two-year colleges to engage students at the intern level, providing real-world experience in IT and cybersecurity.

Enhancing Rural Hospital Cybersecurity

• 🏥 The discussion touches upon the need to move away from punitive policies that penalize providers after a cyber security breach.
• 📄 A vetted directory of third-party vendors is proposed to simplify the process for rural hospitals to enhance their cybersecurity.
• ⚠️ Currently, healthcare organizations bear the burdensome task of vetting vendors individually to ensure they have robust data protection measures.

Standardizing Vendor Security Assessments

• 🔒 A standardized set of privacy and security rules or regulations for third-party vendors could foster greater trust and eliminate duplicate vetting efforts.
• ❓ The exact responsibility for creating and maintaining such a directory is an open question, with potential roles for organizations like Health ISAC or CISA.

Leveraging Existing Cyber Resources

• 🛡️ Senator Husted mentions the existence of state resources like a cyber range and a cyber militia within the National Guard, trained to respond to crises.
• 🚀 These underutilized resources could be instrumental in helping to build and bolster domestic cyber talent and response capabilities.