Huntington, W.Va. – Marshall University’s Cyber Security Institute will host a training opportunity for individuals interested in learning more about operational technology.
The training will take place on April 14-15 from 9 am to 4 pm
The two-day program aims to provide practical training to help leaders protect the systems that keep communities, municipalities, campuses and private businesses running.
Alexandria Donathan, executive director of Marshall University’s Institute for Cybersecurity, recently spoke on MetroNews “Talkline” about the event. He said it will be educational for those interested in cybersecurity and why it matters.
“This is to educate not only the growing workforce but the current workforce where cybersecurity is not followed,” Donathan said. “And for an example of why they should care, I think they had the same mentality in Little Town, Massachusetts when the water utility was hacked by Chinese actors, so you don’t care unless you have to care in some way, so we’re trying to make sure people don’t have to care but are informed.”
The event will empower technology and operations leaders to identify risks, apply governance frameworks such as IEC 62443 and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and strengthen resiliency across physical and digital systems.
Donathan said attacks can come from a variety of sources, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence, but he said more sophisticated, long-term attacks are often carried out by nation-state actors.
“I would say the more systematic attacks will be from a nation state actor, given the length of time they have the resources, but I wouldn’t say it’s one more than the other,” she said. “There has been a lot of good unclassified reporting by CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, about the rapid rise of Chinese nation state actors over the past few years within our critical infrastructure.”
During the two-day training, participants will focus on five critical infrastructure sectors: energy, water and wastewater, transportation, healthcare and finance.
Donathan said the goal is to ensure participants understand how to protect these areas, especially as society becomes increasingly digital.
“As you make things easier in the digital environment, you are also introducing risks, that’s where we are trying to educate the current workforce, to understand the risks that they are implementing into their environment and then appropriately help and protect them as we move out,” she said.
