Information Week Magazine: The U.S. Needs To Close Its Skills Gap

Information Week

FROM THE EDITOR: The U.S. Needs To Close Its Skills Gap
Special Thanks to : Chris Murphy


What does the U.S. government need to fight the escalating cyberthreat? Here's a hint: The Departmental of Homeland Security and the Air Force recently got the OK to hire almost 1,700 cybersecurity pros over the next two years.
It's people. The federal government's travails in recruiting and keeping cybersecurity talent is the cover story of this week's issue of InformationWeek Government. The feds are trying to figure out how best to define IT security roles and vet candidates. Writes J. Nicholas Hoover:



"Attracting experienced cybersecurity pros to government work is the bigger challenge, however. Hiring backlogs for cybersecurity pros are as long as a year at the Air Force District of Washington, an Air Force Unit based at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland."

Also in this week's issue, we explain why the government is trying to create an "identity ecosystem" for trusted interactions online, and how it thinks it can get the private sector to embrace it. Also John Foley writes about the disconnect between federal CIO Vivek Kundra's vision for IT transformation and the reality that drives most agency decisions.
 
 
 
 
 
This week, we also bring you InformationWeek SMB, a special issue looking at a strategy for disaster recovery that small businesses can afford. The key: integrated data protection that combines backup, replication, and other features.
 
Closing The Cybersecurity Gap In Government



In the face of unrelenting threats to systems and networks, federal agencies must find ways to attract qualified workers and develop new skills internally.
By J. Nicholas Hoover

InformationWeek

August 28, 2010 12:00 AM (From the August 30, 2010 issue)

Download the entire September 2010 issue of InformationWeek Government, distributed in an all-digital format (registration required).
Across the federal government, agencies are grappling with a shortage of cybersecurity pros who have the skills to protect their computers and networks from relentless, and increasingly dangerous, forms of attack. The Department of Homeland Security and the Air Force received authority to expedite the hiring of almost 1,700 cybersecurity pros over the next two years, but fast-track hiring is a stopgap solution. The long-term answer requires new training programs and better ways of attracting and retaining employees with the sought-after skills.
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In Microsoft Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010, users can do some fine-grained image editing, including recoloring and background removal. In PowerPoint, you can also edit videos, trimming the start & finish, applying affects, & applying file compressionAt a recent cybersecurity workforce conference at the National Institute for Standards and Technology's offices in Gaithersburg, Md., chief information security officers and other government IT managers identified a range of related issues: a confusing morass of certifications; HR processes that identify candidates based on buzzwords, not bona fide experience; drawn-out hiring and security-clearance processes; federal mandates that push unqualified people to the front of the hiring line; and competition with the private sector for job candidates.

Given the scope and urgency of the challenge, cybersecurity workforce development has become a key IT initiative of the Obama administration and, government officials say, one of the top priorities of White
House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt.

Increased efficiency through converged infrastructure and modular blade servers.
Close the Technology Gap in the Public Sector
Cybersecurity education and workforce development were addressed in the Bush administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, and in April that work was folded into a broader effort called the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, led by NIST's Dr. Ernest McDuffie. Two elements of NICE deal explicitly with the federal cybersecurity ranks, one with workforce structure and the other with training and professional development.
"We've got a problem of where the next generation of engineers are going to come from," McDuffie says. "Awareness, education, workforce, and training all have to come together." NICE is still in the early going. McDuffie and team are identifying program goals, timelines, and performance metrics.

In fact, the problem is even more fundamental. The feds have long had difficulty describing the job of cybersecurity specialists, so the Office of Personnel Management, the government's HR department, is working to provide new guidance around cybersecurity job classifications, hiring, and performance management.
Much of OPM's work so far has been gathering information and developing draft policies. OPM and its auditors have found cybersecurity pros working in as many as 18 different federal job "series," or groups of formally defined jobs. They're mulling whether the cybersecurity workforce needs its own series to help define and track the cybersecurity workforce. OPM is also assessing whether hiring authorities and practices need to change, says Maureen Higgins, OPM's assistant director for agency support and technology assistance.