Cybersecurity Education and Workforce Development: Employer-Driven and Learner-Centered

On this year-long celebration of cybersecurity at NIST, we on the Nationwide Initiative for Cybersecurity Schooling (NICE) are proud to be the primary to take an in depth take a look at a few of the advances which have taken place to deal with employer wants and equip learners (college students, job seekers, and staff) to assist reduce the cybersecurity dangers to enterprises.   

However first, some historical past. Schooling and workforce growth are amongst NIST’s newer cybersecurity-related undertakings. Our roots return to the Complete Nationwide Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) in 2008, which referred to as for the event of a greater ready federal cybersecurity workforce. A number of years later, Congress enacted the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 that licensed the position of NICE to proceed coordination of a Nationwide Cybersecurity Consciousness and Schooling Program and to facilitate cybersecurity teaching programs in any respect ranges which is why we launched the primary NICE K12 Cybersecurity Schooling Convention in 2015.

The NICE Neighborhood – Making Cybersecurity Mainstream

The driving goal behind NICE is neighborhood constructing and coordination. We work to advertise a partnership amongst academia, trade, and authorities to advance an built-in ecosystem of cybersecurity training, coaching, and workforce growth. The muse was set again in the summertime of 2010 in the course of the first NICE Convention on Shaping the Way forward for Cybersecurity Schooling at NIST’s headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Since then, the neighborhood has gathered yearly on the NICE Convention & Expo at a special location throughout the nation annually. (The annual custom interrupted solely by Hurricane Sandy and COVID-19).

Rick Geritz, CEO of LifeJourney, ran the NICE Convention within the early days and has witnessed cybersecurity’s evolution from an unique area of interest to a broad-based, various community. Geritz summed up the neighborhood’s progress: “Cybersecurity is now mainstream and NICE made that occur. NICE enabled the cybersecurity market to scale – by standardizing it, speaking it, and provoking it.”

Working with a mess of companions all through the ecosystem, NICE helps many occasions yearly, together with workshops, boards, and a month-to-month webinar collection.  The annual NICE Convention & Expo, the premier annual occasion that brings collectively the NICE neighborhood, is now hosted by Florida Worldwide College in partnership with New America. The NICE K12 Cybersecurity Schooling Convention, hosted by our accomplice iKeepSafe, attracts educators and college students from across the nation. Every fall we sponsor Cybersecurity Profession Consciousness Week, which we expanded in 2021 to incorporate worldwide companions and final 12 months alone boasted greater than 125 coaching alternatives, 86 webinars, and 7 competitions.

We work with authorities companions on all kinds of tasks, together with the Nationwide Safety Company’s GenCyber program; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company’s Cybersecurity Schooling Coaching and Help Program; and the Nationwide Science Basis’s Superior Expertise Schooling (ATE) and  CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service (SFS) applications. We additionally accomplice with the Nationwide Facilities of Educational Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) neighborhood of their many efforts to supply high-caliber cybersecurity practitioners.  We additionally host an annual Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Summit and Webinar Sequence, in partnership with the Workplace of Personnel Administration.

At this time, NICE coordinates and convenes an ever-growing community of cybersecurity practitioners, educators, trainers, policymakers, college students, and extra. The NICE Neighborhood Coordinating Council – which launched within the spring of 2015 because the NICE Working Group – boasts greater than 2,100 members and 7 extremely devoted working teams and communities of curiosity, all working to develop and improve the cybersecurity workforce pipeline.  

The NICE Framework – Aligning the Neighborhood

Along with advancing the cybersecurity ecosystem, NICE has made a long-lasting mark already in its quick historical past with the creation of the Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE Framework). This framework, first printed in 2012, established a much-needed frequent lexicon and taxonomy, categorizing and describing cybersecurity work for the needs of curriculum growth, job classification, public coverage course, and way more.  

Stephen Miller, director of the Cybersecurity Middle of Excellence at Japanese New Mexico College-Ruidoso, remembers an earlier time when educators needed to seek the advice of different info safety sources for materials to construct on. “After we began the cybersecurity program at ENMU-Ruidoso in 2010, we based mostly our program on the Infosec 4011 and 4016E certifications from the [National Security Agency] and [Department of Homeland Security],” Miller informed me. “We used the O’Web Job descriptions [from the Department of Labor]. Our curriculum at the start was based mostly on Data Items for Data Techniques Safety Professionals, NSTISSI No. 4011 and CNSSI No. 4016 Entry Stage Threat Analysts job descriptions.”

Simplifying issues vastly, the NICE Framework gives not solely a suggestion for cybersecurity coursework that result in credentials but additionally a way of guaranteeing that applications are related to market calls for. “It has helped our establishment higher align with our trade companions,” Miller mentioned concerning the Framework. “The scholars have a concrete understanding of why they’re learning a sure studying module or lab and the way it applies apply to the NICE Work Function duties.”

Starting in 2015, NICE supported the event of CyberSeek.org by CompTIA and Emsi-Burning Glass – an interactive job heats map and profession pathways device aligned to the NICE Framework.  The CyberSeek device has been a useful useful resource for profession seekers and policymakers who search to forecast the cybersecurity workforce wants of the Nation.

Now in its fourth iteration – printed in November of 2020 as NIST Particular Publication 800-181 Revision 1 – the NICE Framework continues to develop in affect and attain. Final 12 months alone, it was downloaded 70,000 instances, and almost one-third of the downloads have been from organizations exterior the US. It has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, and two extra translations are within the works.

Wanting Forward – Selling A number of Profession Pathways

As we embark on the following 50 years of cybersecurity progress at NIST, NICE helps Individuals uncover a number of pathways to cybersecurity careers, together with apprenticeships. We’re dedicated to supporting employers of their efforts to boost and maintain the cybersecurity workforce. With our increasing community of companions, we’ll proceed to advertise a thriving and rising cybersecurity training and workforce ecosystem.