The U.S. government's $1.6M investment in cybersecurity pays dividends for New Mexico

The U.S government is investing more than $1.6 million in training future cybersecurity professionals to help protect federal agencies' data. And they're working with New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology in Socorro to do it.

The grant is part of the larger national CyberCorp scholarship for service initiative, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and is a presidential directive aimed at improving the number and quality of cybersecurity professionals in civil service.

New Mexico Tech's dean of graduate studies Lorie Liebrock is the principal investigator for the grant — and she says she's been a big proponent of the CyberCorp program ever since 2003 when New Mexico Tech first received certification as a Center for Academic Excellence for Information Assurance Education by the NSA and Department of Homeland Security.

"This is an initiative that I've been mothering for a long time," Liebrock said. "This is actually the second round of funding we've received. We got funding for the CyberCorp initiative before, but then with the government sequestration, federal budgets got messed up. ... There was a little bit of a gap in being able to recruit for the program, but now we're excited to be actively promoting the program again."