DianeNewBo

Iowa manufacturers face a tough choice in the coming years: Fail to adapt to new technology and fall behind, or try to keep up and risk a wave of crippling digital attacks. As executives and state officials push toward Industry 4.0 — with factories and machines outfitted with sensors that constantly communicate with one another — cyber security experts worry defenses won't keep up. Companies will be vulnerable to hackers bent on shutting down a business just for the story. Professors at Iowa State University hope to be on the front lines of fortifying the defense.

The state Board of Regents approved the addition of computer science as a coursework category for consideration in the Regent Admission Index when students apply to the three state universities.

DeltaV Code School wants to make it more accessible for adult career switchers to learn how to code. For those currently working a full-time job; however, switching to a full-time bootcamp can be a difficult decision to make. A new nights and weekends program aims to change that.

Doug Jacobson -- already busy with cyberdefense research and helping build Iowa State's new major in cyber security engineering -- has found fun ways to recruit students into cybersecurity studies and careers.

It’s one thing to grow and produce information technology (IT) talent to fill regional workforce needs. Retaining that talent is quite another, especially when employers from bordering states are eager to lure them away.

Iowa could position itself at the forefront of global educational technology development, but officials will need to adopt a “strategic focus” to do so, a state-commissioned report says. In the report, completed in August and released Thursday morning, researchers with Columbus, Ohio-based TEConomy Partners found that Iowa could leverage its “significant base” of larger in-state companies such as McGraw-Hill and ACT plus noticeable research-and-development assets at area universities.

On Monday, September 30 the Waukee APEX Designing Web-Based Technologies (DWT) team traveled to the Des Moines to attend the first-ever Iowa High School Tech Summit. The event was free to all Iowa high school students and was a collaborative effort between Principal Financial and The Technology Association of Iowa (TAI).