MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — More than 600 professionals are sharing some of the latest threat and response techniques.
The 2025 Mountain State Cyber Summit opened Wednesday at the Waterfront in Morgantown.
National Security and Cyberspace Programs at West Virginia University Bill Walker said this event should not be considered passive like a conference. He said it is dealing with active threats, technology and how to better prepare and respond to an attack if it were to occur.
“We’re not only going to highlight the problems but also key in on how we can address these challenges from multiple perspectives,” Walker said Wednesday on WAJR’s “Talk of the Town.” “From policy, operations, emerging technology, workforce development and public and private partnerships.”
Before coming to WVU, Walker served in the executive leadership at the United States Cyber Command’s Cyber Defense Headquarters for a decade, watching the evolution of cyber attacks. Bad actors have used a variety of bugs, HTML applications, and malware, all designed to disrupt normal operations and create chaos.
“This is not a matter of if; it’s when, and that when is now,” Walker said. “We know the nation-state actors are right now prepositioned on critical infrastructure throughout this country in every single state and can take advantage of that by manipulating it or turning it off at a time and place of their choosing.”
Over the years technology has become a larger part of private and business lives, and the development of artificial intelligence has paved the way for a new set of threats. New technology has given bad actors the ability to be much more directed and potent with their strikes.
“But, it’s also changing how our adversaries operate,” Walker said. “Artificial intelligence is being weaponized to automate disinformation, exploit data, and target critical systems at a scale we’ve never seen before, so understanding that shift and preparing for it is essential.”
West Virginia has become a major player in cyber defense in recent years with the partnership between Marshall University and WVU in Huntington, with the Institute for Cyber Security set to open in the fall of 2027. The 72,000-square-foot, $45 million facility features 13 laboratories and six training labs solely dedicated to cybersecurity. The facility will also have an industrial control systems lab, an Internet of Things (IoT) lab, and an open-source intelligence lab.
“It will be the anchor for the new innovation district in Huntington, and it was purpose-built also to be connective tissue with West Virginia University as well as to solve some real complex national security challenges together,” Walker said.
West Virginia is also the permanent home for the annual NATO cyber training event called “Locked Shields.” The global exercise includes business, industry, and academia and is the pipeline for the cybersecurity industry.
“We’re trying to create cyberspace operations experts that know how to come in and deal with these things,” Walker said. “And that’s also why we have other partners with us today, like the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services, which is the largest division in the FBI.”
