One of the biggest barriers to effective cybersecurity is education — both of the general workforce and the IT professionals needed to secure applications and networks.
The knowledge gaps in both areas are fast becoming a strategic weakness for the U.S. but the dearth of trained cybersecurity professionals is especially troubling for the federal government, which is already having difficulty attracting top cyber talent.
As part of the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014, the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a working group within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was charged with updating its strategic education plan.
Resource: National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education
After holding several workshops, online challenges and meetings with stakeholders, NICE researchers released the updated strategic plan last week, which includes an overall vision for boosting national cybersecurity through education, along with specific goals.
“The plan outlines a vision, mission, values, goals and objectives for NICE,” program director Rodney Petersen wrote in an article for new NICE e-newsletter. Petersen noted the final plan is “the result of engagement and deliberation among NICE partners in government, academia and industry.”
While hitting the highlights of the document, Petersen said “perhaps the most important part” was engaging with the community to developed a “shared set of values.”
“The challenges are immense and the status quo is insufficient so we must be prepared to embrace change and look for ways that we can stimulate innovation,” he wrote. “Together, as a community, we can collectively make progress to close the cybersecurity skills gap and enhance our economic and national security.”
Petersen focused on three main goals that will drive future development of the strategic plan — a living document — and NIST and the government’s education efforts.
Accelerate Learning and Skills Development
“We must inspire a sense of urgency in both the public and private sectors to address the shortage of skilled cybersecurity workers,” Petersen said. “This goal represents perhaps the greatest challenge and most critical need to identify creative and effective ways to close the skills gap.”
The strategic plan offers some “creative” options like apprenticeships and cooperative education programs to help young workers enter the field and suggests developing avenues for underemployed and displaced workers to gain cybersecurity training to rejoin the workforce.
Nurture a Diverse Learning Community
The second goal looks to boost traditional education in cybersecurity at the grade school and collegiate levels. This goal focuses on increasing overall access to education, with a particular interest in bringing more minority groups to the sector.
“It is widely recognized that to sustain the pipeline needed for a robust cybersecurity workforce that we must introduce students to career opportunities as early as possible and ensure that their academic preparation in secondary schools propel them into higher education,” Petersen wrote.
He also noted the “underrepresentation of women and minorities and the underutilization of veterans in the cybersecurity workforce is a well-documented concern and we must develop concrete actions that reverse that trend.”
Guide Career Development and Workforce Planning
In a true ecosystem, no one part stands alone. In the same way, training cybersecurity professionals won’t be enough to bolster the workforce.
The last goal is to educate human resources departments, managers and recruiters to better understand the sector, the roles and what can be expected of a cybersecurity employee. The strategic goal pulls together several documents and toolkits that help in this area.
Petersen said the NICE Interagency Coordinating Council and NICE Working Group are working on “more detailed plans and metrics” to make all three goals into realities in the coming years.
“These are exciting times to work in cybersecurity,” he said. “The work that NICE and its partners will do in the coming months to execute upon this strategic plan will be critically important to our nation. We invite you to join us for what promises to be an exhilarating and fulfilling ride.”
