REPOST: Siemens offers $660 million to help narrow skills gap

Siemens announced last Wednesday that it will give $660 million in software for technical schools and colleges in Massachusett. This BostonGlobe.com article has the details. 


It’s not your father’s factory anymore, and that’s the problem facing manufacturers in the US.

Enter Siemens, the global industrial giant, which is donating nearly $660 million in software to a dozen technical schools and colleges in Massachusetts to help train a new generation of workers. The grant, the largest of its kind given to our state, has the potential to prepare thousands of students for careers in advanced manufacturing, producing everything from Bose speakers to Boeing planes.

“We really see a big transformation in manufacturing,” said Siemens USA chief executive Eric Spiegel, who is in Worcester Wednesday, along with Governor Deval Patrick, to unveil the gift. “What we used to call blue collar, these are not blue collar. Plant workers now walk around with iPads in their hands.”

Schools getting the software include Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Fitchburg State University, MassBay Community College, Northern Essex Community College, Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, and Worcester Technical High School. “This grant will really assist us in making sure we are providing 21st-century learning for our students,” said Sheila Harrity, principal of Worcester Technical.

The vocational school wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford the software. Worcester Technical applied for 60 seats, which would have cost about $72 million.

After years of offshoring, Made in the USA is back in vogue, particularly when it comes to making high-tech products, and Massachusetts is on the cutting edge. Manufacturing generates 13 percent of our state GDP, more than any other major sector, according to the UMass Donahue Institute.

But here’s the hitch. While manufacturing is far from dead, kids think it’s a dead-end job. With low enrollment in those programs and tight budgets, our education system isn’t investing as much as it should in teaching students how to operate sophisticated, computer-controlled machinery. Of the roughly 13,600 seniors participating in the state’s high school vocational programs this academic year, only about 1,500 are enrolled in fields related to manufacturing, such as machine tools and robotics. That kind of anemic number keeps business leaders up at night. They call it the skills gap, or the training gap. What’s driving all this worry is the manufacturing sector’s aging workforce — retirements will create 100,000 job openings over the next decade, says Barry Bluestone of Northeastern University. And they’re good-paying jobs, with average salaries of about $75,000.

It’s a problem that has been on the state’s radar over the past few years, enough to spur initiatives and private sector partnerships. One of the issues is companies think we’re a great state for research and development, but not so much if you want to actually make products. The big complaint: It’s too expensive here. “The stereotype is that we’re the brainy state,” said Greg Bialecki, Massachusetts secretary of housing and economic development. “We have tried to fight that.”

Bialecki said it’s not just about creating jobs, but about staying innovative. He points to East Asian countries that started out manufacturing electronics, but now are leaders in designing electronics because they learned a lot about design in the process of making products. Prime example: South Korea.

Starting in the ’90s, Siemens — a German company with a rich tradition of job training — began giving away software to schools around the world. Its “Product Lifecycle Management” technology is used by tens of thousands of companies to design and build products ranging from Dyson vacuum cleaners to NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover.

About two years ago, the company took an interest in investing in Massachusetts and started discussions with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a group that advises small and medium manufacturers. Siemens has about 2,100 employees across the state, with nearly half working in plants in Worcester and Walpole.

Our state caught Siemens’s eye because schools and the private sector collaborated to develop a certificate in manufacturing technology. Siemens also liked the idea of a common curriculum that created a pathway from high school to college to the workforce.

The partnership recruited schools to apply for the software license, and Siemens selected them based on several criteria including their commitment to use the software, such as providing computer lab time and faculty support.

There has been a lot of talk about public-private partnerships lately. Siemens just set the bar very high for the rest of corporate America.

InfoSec Institute offers a wide range of software security-specific classes  to more than 15,000 individuals. Follow this Twitter page for more updates.

REPOST: What's Really Going On With The Global Cybersecurity Wars

Who is winning the battle for cyber security - the enterprise or the hackers? James Foster of ZeroFOX discusses the matter on this Forbes.com article.

There seems to be no end to the security breaches. But then again, all this has driven up the valuations of security software operators. Just look at the red-hot IPO of FireEye (FEYE).

So what are some of the trends to watch? Well, to learn more, I interviewed James C. Foster, who is the CEO and cofounder of ZeroFOX. He is an industry veteran, having written over a dozen books and holds various patents. He has even spoken on Capitol Hill regarding security threats.

In terms of his business background, Foster has a standout track record. Back in 2010, he sold Ciphent to Accuvant.

Here’s what he had to say:

Tom Taulli: Security is a constant battle between the enterprise and hackers. Who is winning the battle?

James Foster: Right now, the hackers are winning. They’re outfoxing the traditional security defenses and products that are available to most organizations. Hackers do not have rules and can quickly adapt and evolve their attacks to circumvent the latest security technology. This game of cat and mouse will not end anytime soon, regardless of what other security vendors may tell you. Combine this problem with the rate in which “old” technology is depreciating in effective value and you have a very serious problem for most organizations. ZeroFOX is addressing this problem with a highly adaptive cloud-based solution that requires no upfront capital investment.

Taulli: What does ZeroFOX do differently than any other cybersecurity company?

Foster: During a 60 Minutes interview in December 2013, the National Security Agency stated that advanced hackers were targeting organizations and their employees through social media and social networking. These hackers were looking to compromise individuals with targeted malware that was being distributed via social networks like Google GOOG -1.38%, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn LNKD -0.54% and more. ZeroFOX is the first and only platform that can identify attackers that are targeting your people and organization’s social media assets in real-time.

Taulli: Thoughts on VC money flow into the cybersecurity sector? M&A for the remainder of 2014?

Foster: There are going to be a lot of mergers and acquisitions in 2014 as well as more IPOs in the cybersecurity space. There’s been a mad dash to buy revenue in the security space to get to liquidity, because the multiples are at an all-time high. I believe that we are going to start to see a pullback on VC money in the security space by the end of the year, though. There are too many companies focused on catching the next generation of malware and too few companies with proven management teams. The combination will result in consolidation and droves of young companies dying on the vine.

Taulli: What is one tip that every business can implement immediately to better protect their assets?

Foster: We are advising our clients to develop a defense-in-depth strategy that makes sense for their business, industry, and environment. A multi-layered security approach protecting the key assets of an organization is critical; however, that approach mandates each organization must first identify and catalog their key assets. My best tip is that every organizatio

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Refining Your Skills for Greater Career Rewards

If you do not know about InfoSec Institute, you may be missing out on the career opportunity of your life. Established in 1998 and dedicated to training and certifying experts in every aspect of the world of information technology, InfoSec Institute has been a major source for certifying experts that are sought by major corporations and governmental organizations.

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It is rare these days for self-taught experts to find the right employment that allows them to continue to pursue and improve their skill sets. By enrolling with InfoSec Institute, such promising individuals have discovered that their careers will take a leap into worlds only previously imagined but were impossible to enter without the proper training and certification.

This company is so good at what they do that they are able to offer guarantees to each enrolled student. If they are unable to pass their exams and earn their certificate of completion, they have up to one year to once more complete their course without any additional charges or fees and to gain the necessary qualifications that will give them the passport they require to change careers or improve their current jobs and emerge as a leader and expert (with all of the perks that go with such a promotion, most particularly increased income) in their chosen field of interest.

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InfoSec Institute has structured the perfect learning program that has made them a leader in the field of high tech. By employing recognized and seasoned experts in each field, they turn the classroom experience into an exciting and inspiring world of learning and application that truly creates new experts who did more than read a manual and play with limited features.

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By bringing hands-on experiences to the table, each student graduates with a secure knowledge of their particular field of interest and the ability and desire to put their new skills to work. It is quite normal for matriculated students to find themselves earning more than they ever have in the past and gaining the respect and appreciation of both their bosses and their fellow worker.


Check out InfoSec Institute today and learn what they can do for you. You too can gain expertise, knowledge and more income by finding the course that best suits your natural skills and interests!

REPOST: What Americans should fear in cyberspace

According to this LosAngelesTimes.com article, computer users often neglect the most basic precautions that go a long the way toward protecting both the Internet's users and the network itself.

Image Source: latimes.com

A recent Pew poll found that Americans are more afraid of a cyber attack than they are of Iranian nuclear weapons, the rise of China or climate change. Such fears are not only out of proportion to risk; if they take hold, they could threaten the positive gains of the digital age. Certainly there are growing threats in the cyber world, and the stakes are high. But there is also a high level of misinformation and plain old ignorance driving the fear. Despite the Internet now enabling us to run down the answers to almost any question, a number of myths have emerged about online security and what it means for us offline. The result is that some threats are overblown and overreacted to, while other quite legitimate ones are ignored.

Every computer user has had to make cyber-security decisions: whether to trust online vendors with credit card information and how often to change an email password, to name two. But these decisions are too often based on scant understanding. The problem is even more acute in business and government. Some 70% of executives have made a cyber-security decision of some sort for their firms. Yet MBA programs still aren't routinely teaching cyber security as part of normal management responsibility, nor do the schools that train diplomats, lawyers, generals, journalists and others who have to make important decisions in this regard every day. Whether in the boardroom or the White House situation room, crucial matters are often handed off to so-called experts, which is a good way to be taken advantage of — and to feel more secure than you actually are.

Instead of focusing on what we need to learn, we've instead fed on hype that fuels fears but doesn't solve problems. For instance, Americans have repeatedly been told by government leaders and media pundits that cyber attacks are like weapons of mass destruction and that we are in a sort of Cold War of cyberspace.

But the zeros and ones of malware are nothing like the physics of nuclear weapons, nor are the political dynamics they fuel. Moreover, the globalized network in which the NSA, Chinese hackers, Anonymous, Google, Target and you and I all play is hardly the kind of bipolar world that spawned the Cold War.

There is certainly a battle of ideas online, but it's as likely to focus on which boy Katniss of "The Hunger Games" should choose in the end (Peeta, of course) as it is to focus on competing political visions. Rather than looking to the Dr. Strangelove era of the Cold War for inspiration, we'd be better off studying other historical lessons, focusing on how the government has effectively approached other new problems areas, from how the seas were made safe to the success story of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in public health.

Despite its central position in both congressional testimony and Hollywood movies, no person has actually been hurt or killed by an act of cyber terrorism. Indeed, squirrels have taken down power grids, but hackers never have. But that is not to say there's no threat. Indeed, our own creation, the Stuxnet worm, which attacked Iran's nuclear infrastructure, demonstrated that cyber weapons can cause damage.

But the fiction of a "cyber Pearl Harbor" gets far more attention than the real, and arguably far greater, impact of the massive campaign of intellectual property theft emanating from China. As with 9/11, the way that we react (or overreact) to an attack, terrorist or otherwise, is what truly determines the impact of it. Understanding the difference between hackers doing something annoying and doing something with the capacity to cause serious harm will better direct our fears and resources.

Cyber security has to be seen as an management problem that will never go away. As long as we use the Internet, there will be cyber risks. The key is to move away from a mentality of seeking silver bullets and ever-higher walls and instead to focus on the most important feature of true cyber security: resilience. In both the real and online worlds, we can't stop or deter all bad things, but we can plan for and deal with them.

In treating cyber security as a matter only for IT experts, computer users often neglect the most basic precautions that go a long way toward protecting both the Internet's users and the network itself. Indeed, one study found that as much as 94% of attacks could be stopped with basic "cyber hygiene." Perhaps the best example is that the most popular password in use today is "123456," with "password" No. 2.

The 19th century poet Ralph Waldo Emerson never could have conceived of the Internet. But it is what allowed me recently to look up a quote by him that is perhaps the best guide for our age of cyber insecurity: "Knowledge is the antidote to fear."


Protect your self from cyber crime by visiting this InfoSec Institute Facebook page for more updates on online security.

Lost in Transaction

According to cyber security experts, the compromise of your identity is not a question of if it will happen, but more a case of when. Over the last decade the number of victims to internet hacking and identity fraud has climbed at an astonishingly troubling leap. Identity thieves have cashed-in on a lucrative scheme where property theft can be committed with nothing short of impunity. Investigators have such a hard time pin-pointing criminals that victims are left trying to recoup from their losses and rebuild their tarnished credit scores for often months if not entire years. Internet fraud makes up some of the most elusive and destructive criminal activity law enforcement has had to face in years, as an intricate, complex, and almost unidentifiable network serves as the data-driven landscape for the innumerable data-hungry thieves scouring the web for potential unsuspecting identities.

Taking preventative measures is the first step towards tightening the grip on your online identity. An extreme vulnerability we all share in our ongoing transaction of data is through our e-mail accounts, which is essentially an inanimate skeleton key towards our own personal information. If you log in and all of your contacts have disappeared; you cannot log in at all; or a friend asks why you sent her an e-mail for free tickets to Jamaica, your e-mail account has probably been hacked. The good news, however, is that most identity thieves have found that infiltrating the systems of major retail outlets and merchant stores is far more lucrative than attacking individuals one by one. The bad news, however, is that if you swipe that card too often around town, your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft are subsequently increased.

Amidst all of these rather grim developments, a resolute new sector of professionals has emerged to investigate cybercriminal activity and identify perpetrators behind these crimes. A number of different companies and organizations – both private and public – have taken considerable strides to alleviate online vulnerabilities of your average web surfer. Educational institutions staffed by trained and experienced experts in fields of information security are passing their own knowledge onto representatives of multi-million dollar corporations, as well as government institutions overseeing safe and ethical practices online. Measures are being taken as prevention becomes a much more appreciated component in the current cyber currency.

For more on how cyber security is becoming an integral component of our economy and society, visit the home page of InfoSec Institute and see who many of the most respected cyber security experts turn to for knowledge on how they can put a stop to their most cunning of foes.