{"id":16300,"date":"2019-09-12T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/12\/news-10042\/"},"modified":"2019-09-12T09:00:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T17:00:32","slug":"news-10042","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/12\/news-10042\/","title":{"rendered":"Are students prepared for real-world cyber curveballs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Todd VanderArk| Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2019 16:00:55 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

With a projected \u201cskills gap\u201d numbering in the millions<\/a> for open cyber headcount, educating a diverse workforce is critical to corporate and national cyber defense moving forward. However, are today\u2019s students getting the preparation they need to do the cybersecurity work of tomorrow?<\/p>\n

To help educators prepare meaningful curricula, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework<\/a>. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is also doing its part to help educate our future cybersecurity workforce through initiatives like the CyberForce Competition<\/a>,\"\u2122\" designed to support hands-on cyber education for college students and professionals. The CyberForce Competition\"\u2122\" emulates real-world, critical infrastructure scenarios, including “cyber-physical infrastructure and lifelike anomalies and constraints.”<\/p>\n

As anyone who\u2019s worked in cybersecurity knows, a big part of operational reality are the unexpected curveballs ranging from an attacker\u2019s pivot while escalating privileges through a corporate domain to a request from the CEO to provide talking points for an upcoming news interview regarding a recent breach. In many \u201ccapture the flag\u201d and \u201ccyber-range exercises,\u201d these unexpected anomalies are referred to as \u201cinjects,\u201d the curveballs of the training world.<\/p>\n

For the CyberForce Competition\"\u2122\" anomalies are mapped across the seven NICE Framework Workforce Categories illustrated below:<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

NICE Framework Workforce categories, <\/em>NIST SP 800-181<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Students were assessed based on how many and what types of anomalies they responded to and how effective\/successful their responses were.<\/p>\n

Tasks where students excelled<\/h3>\n