Cyber Maryland Summit
NIST, Maryland
January 11, 2010
(As Prepared)
It’s an honor to have the opportunity to join you here today. To Dr. Gallagher and all our hosts at the National Institutes for Standards and Technology thank you for hosting us today – it’s a great source of pride for our State that we are home to federal facilities like NIST, the NSA and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.
Our federal assets are a big part of the reason that we’re in a better position than other states to return to prosperity, and later today I’ll be meeting with our Federal Facilities Task Force to talk about new ways to leverage these opportunities to create jobs and support our small and family owned businesses.
Our federal facilities are also a big part of the reason that we not only think that Maryland can be the national epicenter for cyber security – in many ways, as all of you know, our State already is.
Let give me you three reasons right up front why today’s summit is so important. 1. Jobs. 2. Jobs. 3. Jobs.
There are more than a quarter of a million Marylanders working in our technology sector, and more than 60,000 who work in computer systems design and related services. And the subsector of Computer Systems Design is an area where we actually gained jobs this year – growing by 6.6% If you’re keeping score at home that’s the best growth in this sector of any State in America and it’s happening right here in Maryland.
Back in November I had the opportunity to join the good people at Lockheed-Martin, which employs 8,700 people in our State as they opened their cutting edge NexGen Cyber Innovation and Technology Center. It’s a tremendous advantage for us that we have companies like Lockheed-Martin in our State, and it’s also an incredible advantage to have more than 5,500 small businesses working on computer systems design in our State. Businesses like Oculis who employ dozens of Marylanders – CEO Bill Anderson is here. Bill can you stand up?
Cyber security, computer systems design, and all the high tech, high potential sectors of our economy are all connected to our goals for creating, saving, and placing our fellow citizens in quality jobs and that big, overarching goal we share of strengthening and growing the ranks of an increasingly diverse, upwardly mobile middle class, including our family owned businesses and farms. It’s connected to our ability to strengthen our workforce by improving education in every part of our State. It’s connected to our ability as a free people to expand opportunity to more of our fellow citizens rather than fewer,…
… And given the unique security challenges we are facing as a nation and as a State, it’s also connected to our goals for improving the public’s safety and security. I had the opportunity to join President Obama last year when he pledged to make securing our nation’s information networks a top priority, and it’s our priority here in Maryland too.
In this 21st century world – a world in which we face the connected challenges of leading in science, leading in security, and leading in skills and education -- we’re connected as never before to things like the global economy, global pandemics, and the global climate change – and these connections are creating both new challenges and new opportunities. Perhaps there is no better example than in the cyber world. On the one hand, there are threats never before realized or imagined. Hackers on one end of our shrinking globe might literally have the ability to shut down a city’s power grid half a world away.
Yet the connections that we choose to forge – especially in these challenging times, are actually the things that can and will more us forward; forward not only to better economic times, but quite possibly to a better world. And so our big task is to make the connections that create progress; to find new ways to transform our economy and advance innovation so that we can create new jobs and expand opportunity to more people rather than fewer.
Announcing our Cyber Security Strategy
That brings us to our announcement. Today we’re launching a multipronged strategy for cyber security, which we detail in a new report titled Cyber Maryland. Its goal is to create and protect Maryland jobs, and to advance the cause of security not just in our State but for our country and allies across the globe.
Our strategy focuses on four major areas:
- Advancing cyber innovation through such strategies as creating a National Center of Excellence for Cyber Security
- Strengthening our workforce by getting our citizens the skills they need to succeed in the emerging cyber economy.
- Advancing policies that will position Maryland in national leadership on cyber security issues.
- Establishing Maryland as the recognized national epicenter for cyber security and leveraging our assets for economic growth.
Conclusion: Maryland’s Assets
Taken together we believe these strategies add up to more and better jobs,… to improvements in national security and the safety of our communities and families. They are therefore connected to our larger goals for improving our quality of life,… to strengthening and growing the ranks of an increasingly diverse, upwardly mobile middle class.
The strengths, the potential, and the assets of innovation are right here in Maryland. And one of the people who can attest to this is George Heron who is with us from the company “Vir2us,” which last month announced they are moving from California here to Maryland.
And why is Maryland such a great place to move? We have the best public schools in America so says Education Week magazine and therefore one of America’s most highly skilled workforces. We have some of the most important federal facilities and some of the leading institutions of science, discovery, and higher learning anywhere in the world.
We have unique challenges and unique opportunities in these unique times, and often they are one and the same. Our task therefore continues – to create the connections which create jobs, advance innovation and drive progress.
