A cybersecurity “roundtable” is being formed by Maryland state government to “bolster the state’s efforts to become a center for the rapidly growing field,” according to the Washington Post.
State officials have been beating this drum for some time.
- Outgoing Governor Martin O’Malley has said Maryland should be the “epicenter” for cybersecurity. (While others have said the state isn’t the commercial cyber center of the U.S.)
- Founders of cybersecurity companies have said Maryland is becoming the Silicon Valley of cybersecurity.
- Last year’s General Assembly approved a cybersecurity tax credit for “qualified Maryland cybersecurity companies that seek and secure capital from an in-state or out-of-state investor.”
- The state itself has more than 10,000 cybersecurity contractors and roughly 19,000 job openings in cybersecurity.
But it remains a question as to how much or what part of this growing industry benefits Baltimore city. In July, Technical.ly Baltimore tried to piece together the economic benefit to the city of the state’s cybersecurity industry, only to find that summarizing the benefit in any meaningful way is almost impossible. As we wrote at the time, digging into the data of workers in the cybersecurity reveals that “cybersecurity activity is mostly concentrated in the counties south of Baltimore.”
Oh, and let’s not forget about the revelations of domestic surveillance at the Maryland-based National Security Agency brought on by the Edward Snowden leaks.
The first meeting of the new cybersecurity roundtable takes place later this month.
Read more at the Washington Post.
