Maryland wants to become cybersecurity’s Silicon Valley

Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and his state’s congressional delegation are lobbying hard for the state to become the U.S. leader in cybersecurity as the federal government gets ready to spend billions to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from hackers. “Our federal facilities are a big part of the reason that we not only think that Maryland can be the national epicenter for cybersecurity, the fact of the matter is our state already is the epicenter of cybersecurity for our country and therefore an important epicenter for the entire world,” O’Malley said at the CyberMaryland Summit held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (watch the summit here).

During his speech, O’Malley was flanked by four Maryland members of Congress — Senators Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin and Representatives Chris Van Hollen and C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger — in what the Washington Post called “perhaps the most coordinated effort since their party took control of the White House to harness a stream of federal funding and a growing job sector.”

The Baltimore Sun reports that other state and industry officials also say Maryland is uniquely situated to lead the nation in its effort to protect U.S. computer networks from hackers based on the amount of federal agencies in the state already devoted to cybersecurity, including NIST, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

Matthew Harwood writes that according to the Post, Maryland will be on its way to achieving its goal if Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the NSA, is confirmed as the head of U.S. Cyber Command. If Alexander assumes the job of protecting the military’s networks from cyber attack and intrusion he will base the subcommand at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The U.S. Cyber Command could bring 24,000 to 28,000 new jobs to the state.

“Our federal assets are a big, big part of the reason that we are in a better position than most other states in the union to actually get our state economy back on track and lead the rest of our nation into an era of new prosperity,” O’Malley said.

Like other states, the recession has hurt Maryland. The state has a $2 billion budget deficit, reports the Sun, but the paper notes that the federal government plans to spend an estimated $7.9 billion a year to bolster U.S. cyberdefense — a sum not lost on Maryland or some of its big-time tech defense firms like Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., General Dynamics Corp., and Computer Sciences Corp.