The College celebrated the grand opening of the Montgomery College Cybersecurity Lab Monday night in the High Technology and Science Center. The state-of-the-art lab was funded by the College and a TAACCCT grant. Montgomery College will train cybersecurity students and professionals to meet workforce development challenges in a learn-by-doing approach to education.

"Our overall goal as a county is to make sure people have opportunity," said Montgomery County Councilmember Craig Rice. "Whether it's that five year old who is just starting to think about what an adult career will be, or that 45 year old, who is thinking about what the next steps in his or her career path will be. We have a responsibility to them and to everyone in between, and Montgomery College and this program will continue to answer that call."

The lab features a virtual infrastructure that can host 100+ virtual servers, 250+ virtual desktops, isolated networks, wireless and forensic technologies; a collaborative workspace/lab to elicit team work, NETLAB+ servers preloaded software tools to host real lab equipment, virtual machines and lab content at any location for trainees to complete projects.

The event included a tour of the lab and panel discussion about careers in cybersecurity featuring: Karen Britton, senior vice president and COO, e-Management; Joel Fernandez, cybersecurity expert and professor of digital forensics at New York University; Daniel Gray, supervisory special agent, Baltimore Cyber Task Force (BACTF), Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Nathan Lesser, deputy director, National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.