Virginia Economic Review

VEDP Vice President of Knowledge Work Meghan Welch spoke with Steven Chen, the founder of PFP Cybersecurity, about the cybersecurity funding environment in Virginia.

Candice Ling is a senior vice president at Microsoft and head of the company’s federal government business unit. Previously, she served as the company’s government industry lead in Asia.

Brad Medairy is executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia-based Fortune 500 company where he leads the national cyber account and focuses on the cyber missions of national-level clients like the FBI, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S.

Quokka entered the cybersecurity world with a big reputation — under its previous name, the company landed on the front page of The New York Times after discovering a critical security vulnerability in some Android smartphones that sent user data to Chinese servers.

Cybersecurity attacks are evolving at rapid speed, and the U.S. lacks sufficient professionals to address them.

In an era where cyberattacks threaten everything from bank accounts to national security, the need for cybersecurity has never been higher. In 2020, data breaches, ransomware, and other cybercrimes cost the United States over $4 billion in damages, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Recently, an Air Force research agency reached out to George Mason University (GMU) with a pressing issue. Drones were attacking Air Force facilities around the globe.

Virginia's proximity to the federal government and the wealth of private technology leaders headquartered in the Commonwealth have helped its workforce rise to the forefront of the cybersecurity industry.

In an increasingly digital world where data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cybercrimes are pervasive, a skilled cybersecurity workforce is more important than ever. Yet the industry grapples with a significant worker shortage.

States, nations, and any municipality can build and tout their critical infrastructure that, on the surface, may appear second to none. Think: thriving, automated food and agriculture ecosystems. Sprawling office buildings outfitted with remote smart sensors. Unflappable financial markets.

In 1981, computing giant IBM collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Computer Science for a conference, “The Physics of Computation.”

Dr. Sophia Economou is a professor of physics at Virginia Tech and the director of the university’s Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering. Her research focuses on theoretical quantum information science, including quantum computing with numerous types of qubits.

La Vida Cooper is the communications and navigation line of business manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the deputy program manager for strategic initiatives within the exploration and space communications projects division at Goddard, and the executive director of the Washington Metropolitan Quantum Network Research Consortium (DC-QNet), a joint initiative among six federal agencies and two affiliates to operate a quantum network testbed.

The quantum age is rapidly approaching. So rapidly, in fact, that any approach to developing a workforce must account for the changes happening at the speed of light as quantum science shifts from theoretical to practical application.

In the world of financial services, time can represent both money and opportunity lost. The potential time savings from the use of quantum computing can help investors ensure they accrue more money than regret.

Inside the glass-walled headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington County, some of the nation’s most talented scientists are working fast to usher in the quantum age in service of national defense.

Once entirely theoretical, the quantum sciences have slowly but surely become applied sciences, opening the door for technologies that take advantage of our improved understanding of physics at the smallest imaginable scales — even if things can be difficult to wrap your head around at first.

The Port of Los Angeles is the largest facility for handling shipborne cargo in the United States.