Your Chamber’s Cybersecurity Council was hosted by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) last Wednesday for its September council meeting. The meeting featured a presentation by SwRI on its ongoing project with Florida’s Department of Transportation (FDOT), a mission spotlight on the efforts of local nonprofit Building a Purpose, a status update from the Cybersecurity Education Focus Team, and a review of state legislative priorities.
Council Chair Larry Hurtado, founder of Evanesco Inc, introduced Mike Brown and Dan Rossiter from SwRI to present on the Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Data Exchange Platform (DEP) project that is ongoing with FDOT. The V2X DEP is unique in that it doesn’t matter what kind of format the input data is in or whether its constant or periodic feed data, the Data Exchange Platform converts all data to standardized formats that is then sent out to consumers. The implementation of this project will drastically improve vehicle communication, minimize traffic congestion, and will grant access to stored data in order to make informed decisions moving forward. Mike and Dan shared that this project was designed to be agnostic to any particular state’s traffic management system, and they are currently in talks with five of the other largest states in the U.S. to embed this system, including Texas.
To see the slides presented by SwRI, click here.
Following SwRI’s presentation, the Council heard from Jesus Rendon, Executive Director of Building a Purpose, a local 501c3 nonprofit aimed at connecting students to industry professionals in their areas of interest. Jesus provided an overview of some of the programs Building a Purpose has offered, and shared statistics regarding higher education attainment categorized by San Antonio city council district. Following his presentation, Jesus put out a call for mentors in Cybersecurity, IT, and Engineering related fields and highlighted the upcoming Benefit Dinner on October 1st. For more information on Building a Purpose, please visit their website.
The Council then heard from Bobby Blount of MITRE and Chair of the Cybersecurity Education Focus Team, who presented the ongoing work being done by the team. Bobby’s presentation included some initiatives being considered by the team and an overview of all Cyber related education and training opportunities in the San Antonio region by zip code, including K-12, Higher Ed, and workforce development programs. The data collected by the team revealed what zip codes have an abundance of programs in place and identified gaps in those that had very few.
To conclude the meeting, the Council approved three state legislative priorities which will now be sent to Public Policy Council later this month.
The next Cybersecurity Council meeting is slated for October 5th at Port San Antonio.
For more information on the Cybersecurity Council, visit the Chamber’s website and follow Cybersecurity San Antonio (CSSAtx) on LinkedIn.