The city has launched a $100 million effort to turn New York into the cyber security capital of the world.
It will open up a 15,000 s/f cybersecurity center in Chelsea with the help of Israeli innovation expert SOSA and a 50,000 s/f international cybersecurity investment hub in SoHo that will be led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).
“We’re convinced that New York City, the world capital of finance and media, will soon emerge as the new global hub for cybersecurity,” said JVP’s founder and chairman, Erel Margalit.
“If the West Coast is the U.S technology hub, New York can become the international technology Hub in close partnership with Israel and the international community to build the next generation of cybersecurity companies to counter the new threats.”
The two tech hubs are part of Cyber NYC, a multi-pronged approach to strengthen the city’s cybersecurity industry.
The push includes partnering with universities and industry leaders to strengthen the pipeline of new technolgies.
To foster the next generation of cybersecurity talent, Cyber NYC will create new university degrees and programs.
NYCEDC will partner with the City University of New York, New York University, Columbia University, Cornell Tech and the virtual mentoring program iQ4 to offer cybersecurity certifications and degrees. More specifically, all the CUNY campuses will offer a new one-year Master’s program in collaboration with Facebook. LaGuardia Community College will offer a six-work preparatory course that leads into coding bootcamp company Fullstack Academy’s cybersecurity program.
The city is also partnering with other giants such as Goldman Sachs, PricewaterhouseCoopers, MasterCard, Facebook, and edX.org, an international educational website that offers online courses from Harvard University, Columbia University, Oxford University and more.
“New York City needs to be ambitious about cybersecurity because our future depends on it,” said NYCEDC’s president and CEO, James Patchett.
“Cyber NYC will fuel the next generation of cybersecurity innovation and talent, leveraging one of the world’s greatest threats to create a major economic anchor and up to 10,000 quality middle-class jobs.”
According to the EDC, New York is currently home to more than 100 cyber security firms and 6,000 employees. The sector attracted over $1 billion in venture capital funding last year alone.
Michael Mullin, president of Integrated Business Systems, said cybersecurity threats are becoming more commonplace and should be taken seriously in the fast-paced commercial real estate world.
“The likelihood that your company will be or already has been in the sights of a cybercriminal is strong,” Mullin said. “Most compromises took just seconds or minutes to initiate, yet two-thirds of them were not discovered for months or more.”
While Mullin said that preventative technology is getting better, like firewalls and antivirus software, he said education should be ongoing as cyber-threats continue to evolve.
