From: Chronicle of Higher Education
By Megan O’Neil
Nearly 200 college and university cybersecurity programs will have to reapply for a coveted federal designation under new curriculum standards being rolled out by the National Security Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The retooling of the joint National Centers of Academic Excellence program includes the elimination of dated, controversial federal training standards. They are being replaced with curricular blocks, dubbed “knowledge units,” that officials say will enable colleges to develop cybersecurity focus areas while also allowing them to respond to employers’ needs in a fluid marketplace.
There are currently 181 cybersecurity programs with the designation at two- and four-year institutions, teaching everything from introductory programming to offensive hacking techniques. The label can be a game changer, attracting money, students, and prestige, according to some college officials.
The program’s revamping coincides with intense public scrutiny of the cybersecurity field in the wake of disclosures made by Edward J. Snowden, the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, about government surveillance. It also comes as government officials, educators, and private companies wrestle with how best to educate the right number of workers with the right skills needed to protect critical infrastructure, economic interests, and personal data in an increasingly networked world.
“Every cybersecurity professional that comes out of college and takes a job is a win for the government, whether they work for John Deere, Boeing, or Target,” says Robin (Montana) Williams, branch chief of cybersecurity-education awareness at the Homeland Security Department. The country is at a critical juncture “as to where we go next in a world that is interconnected and in which cybercrime globally costs us $388-billion a year. We are losing intellectual property. We are losing our nation’s work and our nation’s vision and our nation’s ingenuity because we are not able to protect it,” he says.
While discussions of cybersecurity may conjure images of self-taught hackers too engrossed in their computers to attend class, most government agencies and top security firms will not consider candidates without a baccalaureate degree. Colleges are not producing them quickly enough, according to work-force studies.
By Megan O’Neil
Nearly 200 college and university cybersecurity programs will have to reapply for a coveted federal designation under new curriculum standards being rolled out by the National Security Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The retooling of the joint National Centers of Academic Excellence program includes the elimination of dated, controversial federal training standards. They are being replaced with curricular blocks, dubbed “knowledge units,” that officials say will enable colleges to develop cybersecurity focus areas while also allowing them to respond to employers’ needs in a fluid marketplace.
There are currently 181 cybersecurity programs with the designation at two- and four-year institutions, teaching everything from introductory programming to offensive hacking techniques. The label can be a game changer, attracting money, students, and prestige, according to some college officials.
The program’s revamping coincides with intense public scrutiny of the cybersecurity field in the wake of disclosures made by Edward J. Snowden, the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, about government surveillance. It also comes as government officials, educators, and private companies wrestle with how best to educate the right number of workers with the right skills needed to protect critical infrastructure, economic interests, and personal data in an increasingly networked world.
“Every cybersecurity professional that comes out of college and takes a job is a win for the government, whether they work for John Deere, Boeing, or Target,” says Robin (Montana) Williams, branch chief of cybersecurity-education awareness at the Homeland Security Department. The country is at a critical juncture “as to where we go next in a world that is interconnected and in which cybercrime globally costs us $388-billion a year. We are losing intellectual property. We are losing our nation’s work and our nation’s vision and our nation’s ingenuity because we are not able to protect it,” he says.
While discussions of cybersecurity may conjure images of self-taught hackers too engrossed in their computers to attend class, most government agencies and top security firms will not consider candidates without a baccalaureate degree. Colleges are not producing them quickly enough, according to work-force studies.
“There is a real need—that is clear,” says Diana Burley, an associate professor at George Washington University who helped write a recent National Research Council report about the professionalization of the cybersecurity field. “What is less clear is exactly what that need is both in terms of the overall number and in the particular areas of the work force that we have to produce people to fill.”
The academic-excellence program was started by the NSA in 1998 in an early attempt to widen the pipeline. The first seven university-level programs were certified in 1999.
Homeland Security became a partner in 2004. Community colleges were added in 2010, and are now 33 of the 181 designees.
‘Centers of Adequacy’?
The Centers of Academic Excellence label has the power to put colleges’ cybersecurity programs on the map, educators say. It differentiates them in marketing materials and attracts employers to campuses. Students and programs are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal scholarships and grants, many administered by the National Science Foundation. Corrinne Sande, head of the Cybersecurity Center at Whatcom Community College, in northwestern Washington State, says that acquiring the designation in 2011 was “the best thing we ever did.”
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