Ron Gula
Earlier this year I was asked to serve on the steering committee of Governor Larry Hogan's Excel Maryland Initiative. The initiative focuses on the development of a unique partnership of the private sector, public sector, and academia to craft a plan to support economic growth through the advanced industries, such as cyber security and life sciences, in Maryland. Having worked at the NSA and a number of cyber services and product companies, including Tenable Network Security and having made the switch to being a cyber-security start-up investor, I had a lot to say on this subject.
My view on this is very simple - given the choice between enabling the next ten "Tenables" and trying to expand the cyber workforce, we should put our efforts into new "Tenables", i.e, new start-ups. Maryland already has a top-flight cyber workforce. Why do we not seem to get the biggest economic development bang-for-the-buck out of it?
Here is my reasoning:
With Cyber Command, the NSA and many other organizations here in Maryland, we have a DNA in the population of experienced cyber professionals. These professionals get pulled into the more than 3.5 million jobs in cyber that are often outside of this state.
