The Department of Homeland Security has begun to provide online cybersecurity training courses to retired uniformed personnel, Nextgov reported Friday.

Aliya Sternstein writes DHS offers on-demand classes in mobile security, malware analysis and ethical hacking to veterans through the Federal Virtual Training Environment.

Retired servicemembers that seek to gain professional certifications from organizations such as CompTIA, ISACA and (ISC)2 offer can take classes through the DHS’ Fed VTE, Sterntein reports.

Registration for a Fed VTE account can be done through Hire Our Heroes’ website.

Hire Our Heroes is a nonprofit organization that cosponsors the Fed VTE program and works to provide employment opportunities for military retirees.

According to a blog post by the Department of Veterans Affairs, there are more than 100,000 users of the Fed VTE online program, which offers at least 800 hours of training to participants.

DHS also provides a guide that seeks to help veterans acquire the skills necessary in a cybersecurity career, the post added.

The Defense Department plans to update the agency’s big data platform used to analyze cyber activities in its networks over the next few weeks, Federal News Radio reported Friday.

Dave Mihelcic, chief technology officer at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the Hadoop-based platform works to extract data from network sensors, audit logs and end points, Jason Miller reports.

“We can use that to build advanced analytics to do detection of cyber attacks and also the work flow associated with being able to counter those cyber attacks,” Mihelcic told the station’s Ask the CIO program.

“One of the biggest applications today is called Fight by Indicator. FBI gives our analysts the ability to not only take the data about that attack and compare it against all known data and then be able to pick the best cybersecurity mitigation mechanism and actually directly task that mechanism,” Mihelcic added.

DoD has reported a 500 percent rise in the number of cybersecurity measures with the use of the big data platform.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe will facilitate a summit on the security of cyber networks and physical systems at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia from Sept. 20 to 22.

The Cyber-Physical Systems Summit will be held to spread awareness about the challenges that organizations face to protect autonomous platforms, infrastructure and Internet of Things-based devices, McAuliffe’s office said Thursday.

“This first-ever Cyber-Physical Systems Summit will bring industry leaders together in Virginia to devise new strategies to secure our cyber networks and physical assets,” noted McAuliffe.

“This type of collaboration is essential to staying on top of growing trends in this fast-moving industry, and staying ahead of criminals across the globe who are working every day to undermine the security of our technological resources and our communities,” he added.

His office added some technology professionals will provide their ideas on how to address cyber-physical challenges as well as strategies to build a “culture of awareness and preparedness” to address threats.

McAuliffe will host the event in partnership with the National Governor’s Association and in accordance with his Meet the Threat: States Confront the Cyber Challenge initiative as NGA chair.

Katrina McFarland, the Army’s acting assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, has described cyber and electronic warfare as enterprise challenges and discussed ways to work through the attacks, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.

McFarland said via video teleconference at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium that work through cyber or EW attacks requires comprehension of systems and categorization of the critical parts, Mark Pomerleau reports.

“If you take a look at a system, there are many functions that a system performs military – some of them more critical than others,” she said.

“That needs to be understood because then, in terms of how do you build protection inside of that system, you create the environment that protects the highest degree those most critical missions while allowing some degradation of the non-critical missions,” McFarland added.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration seeks ideas from industry on how NTIA can help accelerate adoption of internet protocol version 6 in the U.S. as well as information on the potential advantages and disadvantages of implementing the new network protocol.

NTIA said Thursday that IPv6 can accommodate more than 340 undecillion web addresses compared with the approximately 4.3 billion addresses that IPv4 currently supports.

NTIA will collect data to guide the agency’s efforts to help organizations implement IPv6 and contribute to the IPv6 Best Practice Forum as part of the Internet Governance Forum’s intercessional work program.

The agency also plans to use gathered information to craft a report that will support domestic and international promotional efforts related to IPv6, according to a notice posted Thursday in the Federal Register.

Responses to the request for comment are due Oct. 3.

Internet experts have predicted the number of internet-connected devices will increase to as many as 200 billion by 2020, or 25 devices per person, NTIA noted.