Cyber Training courses

Why promote Cybersecurity training?

Securing, protecting, and defending our nation’s digital information and associated systems and infrastructure require building and retaining an agile, highly skilled workforce that can respond flexibly to dynamic requirements. This is one of the foundational goals of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE). Building our nation’s cybersecurity workforce requires two complementary components: workforce planning and professional development. Workforce planning entails analyzing the capabilities needed to achieve the current mission and forecasting the capabilities that are needed in the future. Current and future talent gaps can be addressed through a combination of hiring, contracting, and professional development programs. Learn more about what NICE is doing to promote an agile workforce on the Careers Page.

Explore the Workforce Framework

Cybersecurity is essential to protecting our nation’s technology infrastructure against increasing cyber threats and attacks. The work of cybersecurity professionals is critical and, as a nation, consistency in how the cybersecurity workforce is defined and categorized is vital. Furthermore, individuals performing cybersecurity work must be identified and quantified for effective workforce planning.

In response to these needs, an effort began in 2010 to establish a framework that describes the cybersecurity workforce. These efforts evolved, as more than 20 Federal departments and agencies contributed to the process. The result was the development of the National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (the Workforce Framework) by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE).

The purpose of the Workforce Framework is to describe cybersecurity work irrespective of organizational structures, job titles, or other potentially idiosyncratic conventions. In designing the Workforce Framework, “categories” and “specialty areas” were used as an organizing construct to group similar types of work. The categories, serve as an overarching structure for the Workforce Framework, grouping related specialty areas together within each category. Within each specialty area, typical tasks and knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are provided. Specialty areas in a given category are typically more similar to one another than to specialty areas in other categories. Learn more about the Workforce Framework.