Diversity in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity professionals have always had diverse backgrounds, and that isn't changing. More than half of today's cyber talent comes from backgrounds outside of Information Technology (IT). Backgrounds outside of IT are more common for Gen Z and Millennials in the cybersecurity workforce; only 38% of younger generations transitioned from IT, compared to 53% of Gen X and Baby Boomers. This indicates that cybersecurity is becoming better understood as a career opportunity for younger workers and students, but more effort is needed to ensure this broad and nuanced profession is less reliant on IT as the predominant pathway.

Reducing the Workforce Shortage

To reduce workforce in cybersecurity there needs to be more investments and community involvement in providing Innovative cybersecurity training. Starting at the high school level and expanding to include a broader educational base of Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs), Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), Community Colleges, and all 50 states and U.S. Territories.

We plan to establish an online community using cloud services such as Microsoft 365, Amazon Web Services where we can share and plan to release training curriculum that teaches candidates how to conduct cybersecurity jobs with specific focus on defensive cyber space operations. We are currently evaluating the best platform to use for this concept that minimizes development time while ensuring that progress across discrete subject areas can be measured, tracked, and reported.

We then plan to use live events to allow candidates to unify and participate in the defense or attack of test infrastructure we will build. All of this leads to a measured test (based on age and skill level) against the NICE Framework for a certification in a skill area or work role of their choice resulting in an actual certification showing they successfully can perform their job role(s) leading to expedited hiring for a cybersecurity job function at a partner organization who believes in our approach. We believe this will require either a twelve (12) or twenty-four (24) month commitment from the individual to complete the process as we describe in the next section. While our initial interest targets individuals and young adults in high school or college (ages 14 – 20), ultimately, we are interested in bringing opportunities to under privileged individuals in low-income areas especially those who do not have daily access to technology at home or at school.

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Interested? Get involved in Cyber Unity. Start by signing up here. Our process is simple: Train | Live | Challenge. You can start by taking and reviewing some training material. Next, you then participate in an in-person challenge with a live kit. And finally, you end this part of your cybersecurity learning journey with a grand challenge where multiple groups compete against each other.