Collaboration and a willingness to learn new practices are the best ways to address cybersecurity concerns surrounding cloud computing, according to IT leaders from across the country. Greg Urban, chief operations officer of Maryland, said that a strong core of talent makes a big difference when exploring cloud capabilities.

As the chief information security officer of Fairfax County, Va., and the chairman of the National Capital Region’s CISO committee, Michael Dent has been at the center of his county’s information security practices. Dent sat down with 21st Century State & Local to discuss his experiences in the field and recommendations for other local CISOs.

CenturyLink has been awarded a NASPO Value Point Cloud Solutions Master Agreement, a contract that will enable the company to sell its cloud solutions to state and local governments as well as authorized political subdivisions, such as school districts, counties, and cities.

Disability Rights New York filed a Federal complaint last week calling for New York City to upgrade its emergency services technology to accept text-to-911.

Uber will make its traffic data available to local government officials, with plans to eventually make the data accessible to everyone.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that the nation’s election infrastructure will be designated as a subsector of the existing critical infrastructure sector.

Though state and local governments are aware of the threat posed by ransomware, few are confident in their ability to defend against and repair the damage of today’s attacks, according to a recent MeriTalk survey.

The Trust for Public Land is launching a platform called ParkServe that will contain urban park data from 13,931 cities and towns across the country, covering more than 80 percent of the population.

Though some areas of the country have become famous for high-tech innovation–such as Silicon Valley, Austin, Texas, and Seattle–all congressional districts in the U.S. have both investments and contributions in the high-tech space and should be treated as such, according to a recent report by the Information Technology Innovation Foundation.

Alex Alben, Washington state’s chief privacy officer, is helping private citizens, government agencies, and small businesses in the state better understand privacy laws and how to protect privacy when using and sharing sensitive information.