Cybersecurity Summit Aims to Help Small, Mid-size Businesses

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with the Georgia Institute of Technology and five other groups, held a summit Wednesday to help small and mid-size business owners develop, evaluate, and strengthen cybersecurity programs.

The event, held at the GTRI Conference Center, brought together government, law enforcement, and private sector representatives to share information necessary to build or strengthen a cybersecurity program and explore ways to communicate about cybersecurity with small and mid-size supply chain partners.

“Our vision at Georgia Tech is to integrate academia, government, and industry to aggressively solve threats and transfer results into commercially deployable technologies,” said Steve Cross, executive vice president for Research, who served as a panelist during the event.

“As home to world-class scientists and engineers who are addressing today's threats, while anticipating and preparing for what's next, we're proud to participate in this very important event,” he added. 

The summit served as the 2015 kick-off event for the U.S. Chamber’s awareness campaign, which aims to advance cybersecurity policies and educate businesses of all sizes about cyber threats and how to protect against them.

“A few years ago, cyberattacks against the government and corporations were on the margins of news stories, but now, a day doesn’t go by that we don’t hear about a data breach or cyber-intrusion,” said Ann Beauchesne, senior vice president for National Security and Emergency Preparedness at the U.S. Chamber. “Through this summit and our cybersecurity awareness campaign, the Chamber is urging businesses of all sizes to adopt fundamental Internet security practices to reduce network weaknesses and make the price of successful hacking steep.”

Other summit partners included American Express, AT&T, and Firehost, along with the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the Technology Association of Georgia.