Universities, colleges and the U.S. Strategic Command meet on Iowa State University’s campus for the two-day Deterrence and Assurance Academic Alliance conference, which aims to foster academic community interest in researching deterrence and strategic national security in a global threat environment. The 2020 conference March 11-12 highlights cybersecurity issues including election security, identity theft and nuclear command, […]

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate has hired Jeff Franklin as the chief cybersecurity officer, Pate announced on Thursday morning. Franklin has served as the State of Iowa’s Chief Information Security Officer for the past 10 years. In his new role, Franklin will lead efforts to protect Iowa’s elections in 2020 and beyond, the office […]

Court documents filed Thursday show that Dallas County has dropped charges against two men accused of breaking into the Dallas County courthouse to test its security, reports KCCI. Coalfire Security employees Justin Wynn and Gary Demercurio were charged in September 2019 with felony burglary after authorities said they were caught inside the Dallas County Courthouse […]

For any organization thinking about cybersecurity, it’s hard to think about the risks.  In the 2019 Business Record Leaders’ Survey, readers were overall hesitant about business and government preparation in the event of a cyberattack, with about 30% of respondents reporting they perceive Iowans as somewhat prepared. So how would a regional not-for-profit, small to […]

Each year the Business Record gets the pulse on key issues affecting the region’s business community from our audience. Back in October we reached out, and Des Moines leaders delivered. Catch a glimpse of what people thought about artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles in Des Moines and cybersecurity below, and look for the Business Record’s annual […]

Two months after employees of the cybersecurity firm Coalfire were arrested during penetration testing of state and county courthouses, the security community in Iowa gathered in an Adel Public Library community room — just blocks from the Dallas County Courthouse where they were caught. Awareness Con, organized by Black Hills Information Security, went to the […]

The CEO of the cybersecurity company that employs two men who were arrested after breaking into Iowa courthouses while on contract with the judicial branch called his workers pawns in a dispute between state and county officials, reports the Des Moines Register. The charges against Justin Wynn and Gary Demercurio, employees of Coalfire, were reduced from […]

A new class-action lawsuit filed against Hy-Vee claims the midwestern chain’s recent data breach was the “inevitable result” of inadequate data security despite growing threats against payment card systems. Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP (CSK&D) alleges that Hy-Vee “failed to take adequate measures to assist affected customers, choosing instead to spread out information about […]

Anders Sörman-Nilsson was a lawyer before he became an internationally-known futurist, author and public speaker on the TEDGlobal circuit. His mother, who still runs the family menswear business in Stockholm, Sweden, still thinks of him as a “glorified astrologer,” Sörman-Nilsson told the audience at this week’s Iowa Technology Summit during the keynote.  “There’s no one […]