CISA aims to help cyber, tech pros find their path

CISA’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies helps cyber pros keep up with technology changes ranging from AI to zero trust.

Justin Doubleday@jdoubledayWFED

January 12, 2025 4:29 pm

4 min read

The need for more cyber and technology professionals has become a priority at the highest levels of government in recent years.

Under the Biden administration, the White House Office of the National Cyber Director led strategic efforts to address a deficit of cyber professionals, including a recent “Service for America” hiring blitz. The goal of that campaign was to recruit more cyber and technology talent into government.

The challenge is stark: CyberSeek, a federally funded job data initiative, estimates there are approximately 457,000 open cybersecurity jobs nationwide.

Recruiting is just one part of the cyber workforce challenge. Officials want to build out a training and education pipeline to help expand cyber talent and advance people in cyber careers.

For the federal government, that’s where the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies steps in. NICCS serves as a national hub for education, careers and training resources. CISA Chief Learning Officer Christopher Lein said the NICCS catalog includes thousands of cyber-related courses.

“The catalog offers you the opportunity to say, ‘All right, these are the skills I want to build, these are the courses available, and these are the opportunities I have to take these courses, whether they be virtual or in person,’” Lein said in an interview.

While NICCS can be a resource for anyone, it also has a distinct focus on federal employees.

CISA’s Federal Cyber Defense Skilling Academy, for instance, works with NICCS to provide feds with foundational cyber training. CISA has encouraged full-time federal employees from any job series to apply to the skilling academy.

CISA’s goal is to ensure anyone who takes one of the courses under NICCS or the skilling academy goes into a cyber job with the specialized skills to thrive in a quickly evolving field.

“We want to make sure that our cybersecurity professionals, when they face an incident in the real world, this is not the first time they’ve encountered it,” Lein said. “This gives them the best chance to succeed.”

Getting veterans into cybersecurity is also a focus for NICCS. It provides transitioning service members and veterans with resources, including job listings and a training and education user guide.

“That is a talent pool that we want to tap into, because the wealth of experience they have is hard to match,” Lein said. “Their experience in the military is something we want to utilize. So we want them in the federal workforce, and the cybersecurity for veterans page gives them all the opportunities and all the benefits available to them to help, to help them get it, get their foot in the door and start a federal career.”

Finding a cyber career path

While training and education is readily available to many prospective cyber pros, many people might not know where to start.

That’s why NICCS now offers a “Cyber Pathways Tool” to help people determine how they can pursue specific jobs in cyber and IT. The tool highlights core attributes across 52 specific roles under the Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity, or the NICE Framework.

“It’ll give you a path to building that foundation of cyber skills that you need. And then you can go right back to the catalog and say, ‘All right, I know now these are the skills I need. How do I get them?’” Lein said.

The pathways tool also shows how skills overlap across different cyber work roles. An infrastructure support specialist, for instance, can see how they might pivot to vulnerability analysis or incident response.

“Navigating and finding those opportunities that fit your skill set is difficult to do. It sometimes can be overwhelming for somebody who wants to enter the workforce,” Lein said. “What NICCS has done is really simplified it and made it very easy for individuals to find opportunities out there.”

AI and emerging tech

For cyber professionals, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have quickly become a key part of continuous learning. Lein mentioned both the use of AI, as well as the emerging field of AI security, as expanding areas of focus for the NICCS curriculum.

“Five years ago, this was not even a real conversation in the cyber workforce,” Lein said. “Now, the use of AI is probably going to be one of those fundamental building blocks. Almost every cyber security professional is going to need to have some knowledge of AI, because companies use it, government uses it. Everybody is using AI.”

Meanwhile, federal agencies have prioritized the shift to zero trust cybersecurity architectures. Lein said that’s another area where cyber professionals need to get smart, if they aren’t already.

“Expertise in working with the zero trust architecture is absolutely going to be needed,” Lein said. He added that supply chain security and ransomware incident response are two other training and education areas where NICCS is increasing its focus.

“Cyber is constantly evolving,” Lein said. “We don’t want to discredit other professions, but probably one of the fastest evolving professions out there.”