Recently a few of my colleagues and I had the opportunity to participate in the National Cybersecurity Excellence Partnership (NCEP) partner signing ceremony for the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE).
Established in 2012 through a partnership between NIST, the State of Maryland and Montgomery County, the NCCoE is dedicated to furthering innovation through the rapid identification, integration and adoption of practical cybersecurity solutions. The approach taken by the NCCoE is to integrate commercially available technologies to build practical cybersecurity solutions that can be rapidly applied to the challenges that businesses face each day.
The NCEP partner signing ceremony was held at the NCCoE in Rockville, MD and included speeches from:
- NIST Director Patrick Gallagher
- U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski
- Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley
- Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett
- National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander
We are excited to be a part of the NCCoE and assisting with finding solutions to some of our country’s complex cyber challenges. Along with the other 10 inaugural partners, Symantec’s solutions and technologies will be embedded within the Center of Excellence and will provide an opportunity for our people to work alongside both government personnel and industry colleagues.
Since the NCCoE’s launch in early 2012 there has been much talk about the importance of cybersecurity, including the release of President Obama’s Executive Order on Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. NIST has been tasked with leading the development of a framework of best practices and standards to reduce the cyber risk to critical infrastructure. For its part, the NCCoE will provide the opportunity to leverage the best practices and standards that are developed by NIST in coordination with other agencies and the private sector and test those approaches in the NCCoE lab environment.
With so much focus on cybersecurity, this is an exciting time to work in the industry and here at Symantec we are excited to be a part of the NCEP and look forward to what the future holds.
To learn more about the NCCoE you can visit their website: http://csrc.nist.gov/nccoe/The-Center/The-Center.html.