Dakota State University received a $1 million grant from Google to host a cybersecurity clinic.
Officials say the clinic is improving cybersecurity in the state and abroad.
DSU’s clinic is servicing towns, cities, small businesses and more by helping people gain the skills needed to protect data. The clinic is one of 25 of its kind in the nation.
DSU President Jose Marie Griffiths says the university also hosts cybersecurity camps for students to learn and build skills, many of whom are present at today’s ribbon cutting. Griffiths said there’s not one easy fix to protecting data.
“And we’re going out and we’re helping businesses, small businesses, who also benefits from this. So the students benefit, the small businesses benefit, the state benefits and then the nation benefits by having more secure environments,” Griffiths said. “I think they all add to each other, and so there’s a cumulative effect and it’s like building momentum and we go forward like a big tidal wave.”
To kick off the clinic, DSU is hosting a panel to talk about the importance of projects like one held Wednesday. Rep. Dusty Johnson was one of the panelists. He said the threats foreign nations can pose from a cybersecurity standpoint can’t be overstated.
“I mean every single day the Chinese Communist Party and their partners conduct cyberattacks on our country, millions of attacks on our country. They only need to bust through our defenses once to cause real havoc,” Johnson said. “And we know that they have prepositioned malware that they can turn on if we do something that irritates them. And part of what I think makes America such a great country to live in is that our federal government generally does a pretty good job of protecting us.”
He said the battlefronts of tomorrow probably aren’t going to be focused on tanks, they’re more likely to be about computers and malware. He added it takes an all-around effort to keeping the US safe.
“Dakota State [University], these clinics these youth camps, the other things they do, these are really the ROTC programs of making sure the defenders of America have the tools they need to do that for the decades to come,” Johnson said.
All the resources offered by the new clinic are free.
