{"id":24197,"date":"2019-11-12T20:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T20:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/11\/12\/what-government-must-offer-to-be-competitive-for-cyber-talent\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:24:09","slug":"what-government-must-offer-to-be-competitive-for-cyber-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/management\/hr\/2019\/11\/12\/what-government-must-offer-to-be-competitive-for-cyber-talent\/","title":{"rendered":"What government must offer to be competitive for cyber talent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When it comes to hiring the federal cyber workforce, it is easy to cling to a narrative that much of the work is beyond the control of the government. Focusing on the difficulty of the task obscures the tangible steps already taken to equip the federal workforce for the cybersecurity challenges of today and tomorrow. At the 2019 CyberCon conference, speakers from government, industry and the think tank world spoke to how, exactly, federal agencies can hire people to provide stability in an era of ever-present threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe private sector wants to keep the lights on just as much as the public sector does,\u201d said Sean Plankey, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, Plankey pointed to trainings sponsored and coordinated by the Department of Energy that bring together industry and government to model crisis simulations. Some of these are modeled on the \u201cBlack Energy\u201d attack by Russia on Ukraine\u2019s power grid, and show the importance of integrating federal emergency response with private-sector handling of critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convincing stakeholders within government of the importance of cybersecurity is but one part of the job. Another is making sure that skilled people can be recruited, brought on board, and then kept engaged in government careers so that they are available when needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the available labor statistics for employment in the industry, New America Cybersecurity Policy Fellow Laura Bate found that, while the private sector paid more for the same degrees than government, it amounted to only about a 24 percent increase. While that\u2019s a significant gap, it\u2019s a much smaller and more manageable disparity than popular perception, which holds that the private sector pays orders of magnitude more than the government for the same skill set.<\/p>\n\n\n\t