Hundreds of thousands of jobs in cybersecurity are open across the country, including thousands across Tennessee - and hundreds here in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia.
Our campus - the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga - is now part of a nationwide program to train cybersecurity professionals.
The Cybersecurity Workforce Certification Training puts a particular emphasis in preparing veterans and first responders - police, fire, EMTS and others - for careers in cybersecurity.
This training - funded by a grant from the National Security Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - is a collaboration between UTC, Purdue University Northwest, Ivy Tech Community College and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
I spoke with Dr. Mengjun Xie, associate professor in computer science and engineering here at UTC - along with Dr. John Freeze, director of UTC’s Center for Professional Education.
UTC’s program to train cybersecurity professionals focuses on digital forensics, system administration and artificial intelligence.
Steve Reiter - the program’s coordinator on our campus - is a former chief information officer at Fortune 500 companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Tennco.
I spoke with him - and four participants in the cybersecurity training: Charles Kimbrough, Canesha Gibbs, Joseph Bechtold and Chihan Chen.