A Greater Washington startup is using modern, community-based methods to help entrepreneurs and employees learn skills quickly for the good of their businesses.

For Cybrary, the future of education isn’t in a traditional classroom setting when it comes to practical business knowledge.

“It’s not ‘education.’ I don’t like that term. We’re changing all of our vernacular at Cybrary to go to the term ‘learning’,” said co-founder Ryan Corey about his novel approach to teach cybersecurity.

“Ultimately, people need to acquire skills. Skills don’t need to be in the form of a four-year degree, or an MBA…skills can be something that you can bite-size learn,” Corey told What’s Working in Washington. Cybrary’s approach is to teach skills by “an iTunes model for cybersecurity learning.”

“On Cybrary…you can learn for two hours, acquire a new skill that you can put to work the next day, and then you can get certified on that skill,” Corey said. Currently, Cybrary has a vast library of skills to learn, thanks to user-contributed courses and content. “We’re really building a platform, where producers and consumers can come together and really side-switch,” he said.

This model is a perfect fit for D.C. cybersecurity because “it’s always been a certification-based industry,” Corey said. “We just kind of broke that down into smaller pieces. So you can get certified by taking an extensive test on a small topic.”

For example, there are single tests on TCP-IP and SQL injection. “At the end of 40 or 50 questions, you know that stuff,” Corey said. Such tests are being enriched by practical assessments that ask the test-taker to actually apply their knowledge.

Cybrary is completely free and open-source, with the company using some enterprise tools to monetize the operation.

Corey is based in D.C. because of its cybersecurity pedigree. “This is the best place to do this right now, without a doubt,” he said. “Some of the best talent in the world is right here in the D.C. area. A lot of that has to do with people coming out of the NSA, the local government contractors, the government agencies.”

“Technically there are bigger cybersecurity markets in Palo Alto or San Francisco area, and Boston I believe has a few more startups, but D.C.? It’s moving fast,” he said.

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