Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday announced $1.4 billion in grants and loans to businesses and other entities in rural areas that he said have been hurt by the nation’s “extraction economy.” “Resources are taken from rural lands only to create jobs and economic opportunity in urban and suburban areas,” he said. Vilsack said the department instead wants to support “a circular economy, where value is added closer to home, so the wealth created in rural areas stays in rural areas.” The 751 grants and loans in 49 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, he said, are intended to bolster businesses in rural areas that have often been historically neglected from receiving federal help. The awards are being made through eight rural economic development programs, including Business and Industry Loan Guarantees, and a related CARES Act Program.
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Cybersecurity tools are available for free to many local governments—they just need to know to ask for them, a panel of experts said during a webinar hosted by the National Association of Counties. “One of the challenges I have found over the past few years is knowing what resources we should be taking advantage of and being able to differentiate between one organization that provides a resource and another,” NACO CIO Rita Reynolds said during the Jan. 26 event titled “Advanced Security Resources Available for Local Government Through the Center for Internet Security.” One tool that is available free to all state, local, tribal and territorial government members of the Center for Internet Security’s Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center is a malicious domain blocking and reporting service. CIS works to provide that through a partnership with the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Akamai.
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