Cybersecurity is a growing concern for just about any size company, so the public, private and non-profit sectors in Wyoming are teaming up to build a firewall against cyber-attacks.  In recent months, there have been critical assaults on American infrastructure and industry with the Colonial Pipeline and the meat producer JBS hacks.  Data breaches have become a common occurrence forcing businesses to take a deeper and more proactive look at cybersecurity practices.

As part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill, the Small Manufacturer Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, was introduced to provide additional funds to Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Centers.  MEP’s are the local part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) network that helps manufacturers, producers and entrepreneurs stay competitive with their cybersecurity programs.

This is important in Wyoming because of the $90 billion Congress appropriated toward the modernization of three missile bases.  F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, WY, will be one of these bases receiving a new weapons system called Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), an upgrade to America’s nuclear deterrence missile system.

As cyber crimes continue to evolve, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has developed new measures to increase security across the defense supply chain, the CMMC standard.  The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is a new set of standards from the DOD to enhance the cybersecurity capabilities of defense contractors in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB).  By the fiscal year of 2026, all new contracts will require a CMMC certification between Level 1 and Level 3 to qualify for government contracts.

With the implementation of GBSD and the DOD’s CMMC, there is a need to bring businesses up to speed on their cybersecurity capacities.

Rocky Case, Director of Manufacturing Works, a Wyoming-based MEP, is looking forward to getting companies ready to compete for business in the DOD space.

“There is a criteria in place that these companies have to meet for that business,” Case said. “Manufacturing Works teams up with private and non-profit partners to help these businesses get there.”

While cybersecurity is a significant factor in government contracts, it is becoming apparent that the need for cybersecurity exists for just about every business out there today.

Case added that in cybersecurity, people are scared; they think it is too complex.  Most people ask themselves what they need to do and feel that they will never be able to manage it, so why do anything.  They assume that the threat is minimal because they are small businesses, and a cyber-attack will never happen.

CyberWyoming is a non-profit working to change that perspective and bring business communities together on cybersecurity and advance security through information sharing.

CyberWyoming has been running a cybersecurity competition for small businesses over the past four years that is the only competition of its kind nationwide, according to Laura Baker, Executive Director of CyberWyoming.

The competition is a free service offered to Wyoming businesses to help them address the people, processes and culture side of cybersecurity.  Throughout nine months, participants work with a cybersecurity business counselor to go through a customized process based on the NIST SP 800-171 standard to develop a cyber team that will work on a couple of cybersecurity issues each month.

“The reason we put this together was primarily just to make cybersecurity fun,” Baker said.  “We want businesses to feel like they can manage this themselves.  The surveys we have at the beginning of the competition and at the end go from I’m pretty nervous about the subject of cybersecurity to I’m pretty confident about the subject of cybersecurity.  They feel they can continue to manage their maintenance plan on their own.”

The competition winners get to speak at a local cybersecurity conference and earn a ‘Made Safe in Wyoming’ logo that can be displayed in their business to tell their customers they care about data privacy.  After going through the competition, manufacturers and small businesses are at the point where they can qualify for programs offered by Manufacturing Works and other economic development agencies to further their cybersecurity programs.

“When you first start, you’ve got nothing, but after the competition, you have gotten a lot done,” Baker said.  “There is always more to do, and cybersecurity is a continuous improvement process.”

CyberWyoming usually works with smaller companies.  “They’re mom and pop shops; they might have three employees; they might have ten or less computers.  Quite often, they are the types of shops that major service providers don’t really want as customers because they don’t make them a lot of money,” Baker said.  “This competition empowers them to do what they can do and then puts them in contact with other resources throughout the state.”

Being prepared and showing due diligence in cybersecurity allows these smaller companies to grow by securing government contracts.  Businesses can confidently hire new employees to fulfill these contracts, and that is important in Wyoming when there is a reduction in coal use resulting in the loss of jobs, according to Baker.  Wyoming has been one of the top coal-producing states in the country for decades.

A vital component of these programs is education; CyberWyoming introduces businesses to the basic concepts of cybersecurity but, for those who want to bring their program up to the level of the DOD’s CMMC, Fourth State Communications, LLC is working with Manufacturing Works and CyberWyoming to help navigate the waters.

“It’s overwhelming there is a lot of potential in Wyoming, but companies can’t get those contracts if they are not cyber secure,” John Edwards, co-founder of Fourth State Communications, said. “It used to be a scouts honor type of thing that if you said you were cyber secure, the government believed you were secure.”

As prime government contractor’s businesses can be secure, but their subsidiaries could not be, this leaves a backdoor open that could reveal government secrets.  According to Edwards, that’s where the CMMC and working with MEPs have come in to prevent these types of leaks.

Fourth State Communications assists companies with the NIST SP 800-171 assessment to ensure they comply with government requirements.

“A lot of companies are kind of in shock when they realize the level of cybersecurity is required for government work,” Edwards said.  “We get them comfortable with it and make sure they are getting better with their security plan going forward.  The goal is to start getting them into an implementation process, so they are ready at an assessment level.”

Business development specialist with Cheyenne Leads, Derrek Jerred, brought Fourth State Communications, CyberWyoming and Manufacturing Works together to address cybersecurity issues for Wyoming businesses.

According to Jerred, Wyoming is putting heavy investments into broadband access for rural communities to connect people to the modern economy.  Programs like CyberWyoming will help protect businesses from these communities from cyber threats on a base level.  As these companies start to grow, it is not about just accessing the modern economy; it is also accessing government work.

“Wyoming is moving forward at a rapid rate,” Jerred said.  “By having all these pieces in place, we are doing our best to make sure that it’s a holistic way of moving forward, not just pieces of the puzzle.”