The Pentagon’s short more than 20,000 cyber pros. Veterans could help fill the gap.

Guest:	Ryan Dunford
Title:	Bit-Wizards lead infrastructure engineer
Summary:	The Pentagon faces a shortage of more than 20,000 cyber professionals, and across the country, the civilian cyber shortfall is estimated at over 750,000. This raises big questions about how to build a stronger pipeline. Veterans bring mission focus and technical aptitude, but challenges remain in training, credentialing, and connecting talent to opportunity. We're exploring what works and what’s next for bridging the gap between military service and cyber careers.

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton Recent DOD news revealed that the military says it’s short 20,000 cyber professionals, and we’ve heard a number probably bigger than that by an order of magnitude for the commercial sector. What are the biggest obstacles that you think are hindering building this cyber workforce?

Ryan Dunford I think some of the biggest obstacles to building that workforce come from the idea that the cyber industry is extremely complicated or that it requires some sort of superior intellect for somebody to get into, that it’s not accessible. I think another part is that the education feels out of reach for some, like they don’t have the ability to get the certifications or the schooling required in order to break into the industry.

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Terry Gerton So you’re making the point that the veteran population would be a great target for building the cyber workforce if we could recruit more veterans into these kinds of positions. Tell me more about the connections that you draw between military experience and cyber work.

Ryan Dunford Well, from my own experience, when I was recruited into the Marine Corps, I took the ASVAB. They gave me a choice of jobs and to be honest, at 19 years old, I just picked the one that sounded the coolest and I had no IT background or anything like that. But what it allowed me to do was get myself the IT training, the experience, the on-the-job training, everything that would then serve me later on in my career when I got out into the private sector.

Terry Gerton And for veterans who may be leaving the military without military IT experience, how did they even begin to think about connecting to a cyber opportunity?

Ryan Dunford For somebody who’s been in the military, but not in military IT, the transition is not as hard as you would think. There is schooling out there, there is education out there for you, and the skills that you learned as an active-duty military member can serve you across the cyber industry in so many different ways. The inherent leadership training that we get as active-duty military members, the attention to detail that is stressed so much, operational excellence, all the great things that make you good at being a soldier, sailor, Marine will make you good at your job in the private sector as well. The only thing you need to bridge the gap is to just reach out and get the training.

Terry Gerton We talk a lot, in terms of veteran employment and transition, about those soft skills, those leadership skills, that flexibility and initiative. But cyber really does have some technical skill requirements. Where should folks be thinking about looking for the right kind of training? Are they just credentials? Are they degree programs? Is it all of the above? If someone’s interested in this, where should they start?

Ryan Dunford Without formal experience, there’s a few different places you can start. There are industry certifications from some of the big names like CompTIA, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, AWS. Those certifications are going to serve you extremely well. They are highly visible to employers on a resume and can help establish that you have put in the work and have the technical knowledge required to make it in the industry.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Ryan Dunford. He’s a former Marine and lead infrastructure engineer at Bit-Wizards. Let’s change the focus a little bit. We’ve been talking about veterans so far. But for folks who are still on active duty and maybe separating soon, what programs should they be looking at it? Are you engaged with the SkillBridge program or other sorts of GI Bill-funded certifications that folks might engage with to help prepare them for cyber opportunities?

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Ryan Dunford First and foremost, listen to the transition assistance folks. That was a big part of transitioning out of the military. It’s easy, at the end there, to kind of blow it off and just get super impatient to get out. But the transition assistance program for the military is excellent and helps a lot. I would say to those people: Start looking around for colleges. There are a couple colleges out there that offer IT industry certifications to go along with your degree, and that just makes you even stronger in the workforce. There are programs out there that will allow you to leverage your GI Bill in order to break into the cyber field, whether it be in IT administration or cybersecurity or anything like that. All of those opportunities you have in front of you, take your time, find the one that you want, and pursue it with the same determination you do any other mission.

Terry Gerton You started by saying people are sometimes intimidated by the complexity or the technology in a cyber job. Why don’t you take just a minute and tell us what you think it means to work in cyber? What would people be doing day to day when they come into the office?

Ryan Dunford It’s a very diverse field. There’s a lot of choices out there as far as what you want your career to be and the path that you could take. I personally, as a lead infrastructure engineer, work a client-facing job where every day I’m taking calls from different clients with different types of IT problems. The biggest benefit to that is that I get a diverse challenge every day. But I have to maintain those customer service skills. I have maintain a sense of duty to the client. A lot of those things that I learned in the military. And then among the small team that I work with, having the adaptability and the leadership skills that I’ve learned in the military has also benefited me. If you want to specialize, you absolutely can. There are places you can go where you could, if you wanted to be a cybersecurity professional and just work in that security sector, you absolutely could do that. If you want to just work in the background and work in programming or software development or something like that — that’s all available to you. Just because you feel like the part of it that you’ve seen might be a little bit intimidating or that you don’t quite understand it, I’d still encourage every veteran to look into IT as a possible career because there could be something out there for you. There’s a little something for everybody; some of it more on the customer service and soft-skill side, some of the more on the highly technical side. But it’s all there for you.

Terry Gerton So should someone just go to Indeed, for example, and search “cyber jobs” and start reading about what they require? Is that a good way to get a feel for it?

Ryan Dunford A lot of the skills, like I mentioned before, are already there. A lot active duty military members have a lot of skills necessary to make it in the IT world. But that’s definitely something that can help. Go out to the job boards, start looking at the job postings that are out there. One of the challenges that veterans run into when they transfer into the private sector is the language barrier. The military has its own language, the acronyms and the different terminology that gets used for different things doesn’t always translate directly into the private sector. So it can be extremely valuable to read those job postings. Find out what terminology is being used in the private sector — what one thing means and how to associate that with the corresponding military term. Those sort of things will serve you really well when you’re out there looking for those jobs.

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