Targeting the cybersecurity talent gap in the US, the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation (NCSF) plans to deploy 25,000 high-level specialists by 2025 – and relying on a free recruiting game.
According to the Cybersecurity Workforce Study by (ISC) 2, the US would need to hire 359,236 additional cybersecurity professionals to have enough talent to protect the critical assets of all companies.
NCSF’s initiative now targets cybersecurity professionals who can respond in real time to military-grade cyber attacks – a particularly rare type of talent in an already in high demand area, said Alan Paller, national director of this “25 x” 25 Challenge “project , in a recent interview with Government Technology.
Paller is also president of the Cyber Talent Institute, a nonprofit “research and action” that NCSF recently launched to support efforts to develop cyber talent, and president of the regionally accredited cybersecurity training course SANS Technology Institutes that give scholarships to those who are well advanced in NCSF’s cyber training game and do extremely well in a subsequent competition.
GAME-BASED RECRUITMENT
In order to expand the ranks of aspiring cybersecurity professionals, we need to find ways to go beyond those who already know they like cybersecurity in order to attract others who may never have considered, or never touched, the topic to but might discover a talent and a passion for work, Paller said. NCSF’s free online cybersecurity training game called CyberStart is designed to do just that by introducing high school and college students to the subject while teaching them the basics.
“One of the major challenges facing state and local government is cybersecurity recruitment because there is a huge hunger for talented people,” he told GT. “There are many more kids who are good at puzzles and games than computer scientists – the chances of finding a much larger pipeline of cyber talent this way are pretty good.”
A game-based approach is designed to open the doors to this larger audience by providing newbies with a fun way to explore encryption, hacking, and other areas of cybersecurity without the pressure or obligation of formally enrolling in a course.
Without experience, players can learn while playing through educational resources and hands-on experience working through the puzzles and challenges. The difficulty gradually increases as users advance.
Participants who complete enough of the game’s challenges within a set period of six months will be invited to a cybersecurity contest, in which the top performers will win scholarships for cybersecurity training.
To achieve a harvest of 25,000 high-profile specialists, it would take 2 million people to try the game, Paller said. Having such a large pool is important because not all players achieve or will achieve a high level of proficiency.
INCLUDING RECRUITMENT
In order to make cybersecurity training accessible and reach untapped talent, it is also important to consciously address the demographic groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in this area.
To promote gender and racial diversity in the sector, the organization runs a girls-only group called Girls Go CyberStart and works with programs from the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), which Paller says typically includes significant numbers of black and Hispanic attendees. The U.S. Army says about 40 percent of their JROTC programs take place in downtown schools, where about half the population is non-white.
The most recent CyberStart game drew 29,000 participants, about 36 to 37 percent of whom were female, 19 percent Hispanic American, and 9 to 10 percent black, according to Paller.
STUDENT EXPERIENCE
For students like Haya Arfat, the gamified approach seems to work. Arfat was a junior with an interest in computer science but little experience with cybersecurity when she first tried the game. She told GovTech that the scholarship award initially caught her attention, but the fun of the game kept her addicted.
“It immediately felt like I wasn’t studying or competing, just playing for fun. It was more of a pastime than something I had to do for my college applications, ”said Arfat.
Arfat said the game and the competition that followed were both presented as learning opportunities rather than tests to be beaten to make them feel accessible to curious newbies. She won a competition scholarship during her junior year and is now an aspiring student at Texas A&M University pursuing a career in cybersecurity.
The game “really opened my eyes to what is left in the field of computer science, besides just becoming a programmer and software developer,” said Arfat. She added that her participation gave her confidence to compete in other cyber competitions and introduced her to areas like Python that were useful in college classes.
NCSF launched its CyberStart America game and competition program for US-based high schools in 2017. A Cyber FastTrack companion program, meanwhile, is aimed at college students – including those who may be looking to pursue entirely different fields – as well as those already in the workforce.
Jennifer Maynard was one of the latter. She had a job in IT support and administration when she decided to try FastTrack to explore new options.
“When I graduated from college … I became interested in analytical problem solving,” Maynard told GT. “When I read about the CyberStart FastTrack competition, I thought it sounded interesting … maybe it’s fun and I’ll just see how it goes.”
She became a finalist and won a scholarship to the SANS Institute’s Applied Cybersecurity Program, which she completed within a year and received Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC). Maynard then got her first role in cybersecurity, working as a SOC analyst for the managed protection startup Expel.
“The best and worst about that [CyberStart] If there is competition, it was very difficult, ”thought Maynard. The version of the competition she entered in 2019 was longer than the current form, she said. “[It] eaten up a lot of time [but that was] good for me as I came out more determined by saying, ‘Hey, I really care.’ “
PROGRAM UPDATES
Other efforts have also been made to refine the program.
Talks with employers resulted in new career-related skills being added to the game, and Paller said the program continues to look for ways to work with companies to lead CyberStart players to jobs and internships, an issue that is at the heart of an upcoming one July 21st is the virtual forum.
The organization is also in discussions about potentially hosting their game on a popular platform like Steam or Twitch to attract more players, and is working on expanding its reach by partnering with college-based cyber clubs to give them access to the game .
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/cybersecurity-game-aims-to-train-25k-specialists-by-2025/
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