Last year, Los Angeles launched the nation’s first city-backed cybersecurity lab primarily to help local businesses address online threats, and now that lab is expanding.
The city is building the expansion with a boost from a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to Smart Cities Dive. The additional support is expected to help the Los Angeles Cyber Lab develop better threat intelligence that will aid its public and private partners. Those partners will be able to submit threats, which will then be analyzed and distributed among other participants.
Part of the announcement was also that the grant will help the lab to support growth in the cybersecurity industry via investing in an innovation incubator to be opened to students, researchers and other stakeholders. This facet is to be expanded with training and conferences.
The role that municipal governments play in helping their communities is a changing one, with some — Los Angeles being at the forefront — taking a more active role. Municipal governments warding off cyberattacks within their own jurisdictions, however, is also of increasing concern as headlines this year have detailed high-profile cyberattacks on local government in Atlanta, the Port of San Diego and others.
