Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser's office will grant Metropolitan State University of Denver about $500,000 to expand cybersecurity workforce development and rural cyber support.
The money comes from $3.6 million Colorado received in a 2019 multistate settlement with Equifax. The settlement was over a nationwide data breach that exposed Equifax customers' personal information in 2017.
"Our state's needs for cybersecurity expertise is growing rapidly. Many small communities don't have the workforce or budget to detect and respond to cybersecurity threats," Weiser said. "With the rising importance of cybersecurity preparedness to business, a large federal and military presence in the state, and our continually growing metro and rural populations, the need for cybersecurity-related expertise in Colorado has never been higher."
MSU Denver's cybersecurity program is the lead institution for Project PISCES, a non-profit that provides no-cost cybersecurity monitoring and data protection for small, public-sector entities, like counties, school districts and fire districts.
Once the money is disbursed, MSU Denver hopes to train 100 new cybersecurity analysts by next summer. The grant will be issued over a two-year period, with the option to extend for an additional year, contingent on a state evaluation of the program.
Colorado has been subject to several high-profile cyberattacks and data breaches over the last several years. Earlier this summer, the Colorado Department of Higher Education said potentially tens of thousands of people who attended primary school or university in Colorado may have had confidential information breached by hackers, including social security numbers and education records.
Cyberattacks have also taken down Colorado's state government website, as well as shut down local government offices.
Such attacks can be expensive for governments to resolve. In 2018, the state spent $1.7 million to restore Colorado Department of Transportation servers following a ransomware attack.
