Cyber Security

A Beltsville technology company that bought a former department store building in Glen Burnie said this week it plans to convert it into a sprawling data center for government and commercial customers. Privately-held AiNet Corp., which owns and operates data centers and fiber optic networks, bought the former Boscov's department store building at Marley Station Mall in January for $1.6 million from an arm of General Growth Properties. Deepak Jain, AiNet's founder and president, said his company is ramping up operations this spring and summer at the 300,000-square-foot facility.

A Beltsville technology company that bought a former department store building in Glen Burnie said this week it plans to convert it into a sprawling data center for government and commercial customers. Privately-held AiNet Corp., which owns and operates data centers and fiber optic networks, bought the former Boscov's department store building at Marley Station Mall in January for $1.6 million from an arm of General Growth Properties. Deepak Jain, AiNet's founder and president, said his company is ramping up operations this spring and summer at the 300,000-square-foot facility.

L ast year, I stood next to President Barack Obama at the White House, when he pledged to make securing the country's most vital computer networks a top economic and national security priority. It's a task that President Obama has described as the "most serious economic and national security challenge we face as a nation." Recent news that Google was victim to a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" is a stark reminder that, as individuals and as a nation, we must be more vigilant and more determined in our efforts to secure our cyber infrastructure.

Students from Catonsville and Lansdowne high schools and Western School of Technology and Environmental Science were among the 161 from19 Baltimore County public schools whose scores at a regional competition qualified them for the statewide Future Business Leaders of America conference in Hunt Valley in April. During the Feb 1 regional competition at Dundalk High School, 263 students participated in online events, such as accounting, business law, cyber security and global business; and 89 participated in performance events, including business ethics, public speaking, emerging business issues and client service.

Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to promote Maryland as the "national epicenter" for cyber security innovation and to team with the state's Washington delegation to vie for billions in government spending as the global war on terrorism intensifies efforts to protect computer networks. State and industry officials said Maryland is better positioned than other areas, such as California's Silicon Valley, to be the premier cyber security hub because major defense agencies are based here already.

Maryland technology companies that specialize in cyber security are expecting to reap the benefit of billions in federal spending after President Barack Obama called May 29 for a far-reaching overhaul in the way the country secures its communication and data networks. An already-established cyber security industry in the state, fueled by an infusion of an expected $30 billion in federal spending, could create thousands of jobs and new opportunities for research and development at Maryland universities.

SINCE 1988, when a software worm effectively shut down the fledgling Internet, we have known cyber-terrorism is possible. Indeed, over the past two decades, hackers and pranksters have momentarily crippled innumerable computers with viruses. The appointment of veteran diplomat Richard A. Clarke to direct the nation's cyber security acknowledges the obvious: Computer terrorism is a realistic threat. A well-planned computer assault can paralyze life in the United States more quickly than anything short of a nuclear attack.

While Texans don't apologize for having oil reserves and Floridians aren't bashful about their warm weather and sunshine, Marylanders are seldom caught boasting about one of the state's most impressive resources - a veritable army of people who know how to spy in cyber space. The presence of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade has long been the least-talked-about jobs engine in the state's economy for obvious reasons. It's a government agency so secretive that neither its budget nor the size of its payroll is ever officially revealed.

KEYW Corp., a Hanover-based cybersecurity company that works with the United States military and defense contractors, said Friday it bought a privately held cybersecurity company in Columbia for $13 million. KEYW acquired JKA Technologies Inc., a nine-year-old company that offers network engineering, information assurance and software engineering. JKA had revenues of $13 million last year. It is the 10th company acquired by KEYW, which went public last year, since it was formed in August 2008.

Viewed from an array of perspectives, Maryland's economy looks like a winner. During both the 2001 recession and the most recent economic downturn, Maryland's economy easily outperformed the nation's. For instance, during the earlier recession, Maryland's job loss was 15,800 jobs, or 0.6 percent of total nonfarm jobs at its pre-recession peak. By contrast, the nation lost 2 percent of its jobs, or 2.7 million. Maryland's advantage during the most recent recession was even more apparent.

The United States is under attack from an unknown enemy. Legions of enterprising foes, both foreign and domestic, are lurking in cyberspace. They threaten to take down our defense networks and power grids, along with our banking, transportation and communications systems. President Barack Obama calls this escalating cyber threat "the most serious economic and national security challenge we face as a nation. " The House Armed Services Committee asserts that the Pentagon's computers are targeted at least 5,000 times every 24 hours.

While unemployment lines remain long elsewhere, SafeNet Inc. is one Maryland employer that's hiring. The Belcamp cyber security firm has more than 100 job openings for consultants. But so far this year, it has only been able to fill four of those positions. That's because in the white-hot world of cyber security, there's a lot of opportunity but not enough qualified workers to take advantage. As the federal government, contractors who support federal agencies and private companies ramp up spending to secure complex computer networks, they are all competing for a tight pool of high-tech specialists and workers with government security clearances.

The federal government has awarded a $4.9 million grant to the county in hopes of building a work force trained in cyber security for a new command at Fort Meade. The Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corporation, Anne Arundel Community College and the Pathways to Cyber Security Careers Consortium initiative will share the funding, all with the goal of training workers for the U.S. Cyber Command, a new unit headquartered at Fort George G. Meade that will lead the military's effort to defend against and to mount computer attacks.

A war broke out in November 2008 — not on the battlefield, but in 7 million computers across the world. The soldiers are computer geeks armed with state-of-the-art codes to eliminate the enemy, a dangerous worm quietly and quickly settling into unsuspecting hard drives. A year and a half later, we're still battling. The worm, nicknamed Conficker, continues to outsmart our most sophisticated minds and technology. It's hiding in the shadows, ready to strike. What kind of damage Conficker will cause is unknown, as is the identity of its creator, but experts warn it could be catastrophic.

A s Maryland readies itself to rebound from the recession, it must first look to what employers will need from the next generation of workers to sustain prosperity. Maryland lays claim to major universities, prestigious federal laboratories, top-ranked K-12 schools and a strong system of higher education. These assets have helped Maryland attract high-skill, high-wage jobs in health care, biosciences, information technology - and soon many more jobs in Base Realignment and Closure transfers and cyber security.

S ecretary of State Hillary Clinton has commendably warned states, terrorists and their proxies that America will protect its computer networks. To do so, however, the federal government must do much more to reach out to the private sector, which controls the vast majority of U.S. critical infrastructure, from banks to communications to energy. Cyber security affects every American. It enables the operation of nearly every part of the economy, from banking to manufacturing to retail to health care.