FEDERAL CYBERSECURITY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN (2019) Challenges Cybersecurity education and workforce development, as emphasized in the 2018 Federal STEM Education 5-year plan, Charting a Course for Success: America’s Strategy for STEM Education, 25 form a critical element for successful implementation and transition to practice of any advances in cybersecurity R&D. The Nation needs to make cyberspace worthy of the public’s trust by investing in an education and training ecosystem that supports the application of “systems security engineering”26 capabilities at all proficiency levels. Challenges in developing the requisite education infrastructure include the following: • Emphasizing education imperatives in two broad categories: (1) professional careers in • • • • • cybersecurity related science and technology, and (2) the general population of users of safe and secure cybersecurity infrastructure. Expanding student and worker support, with a focus on broadening participating by underrepresented groups, via scholarships, fellowships, and educational grants; internships, apprenticeships, and cooperative learning opportunities; consortia-based structures for education, with job rotation and cross-pollination between government, industry, and academia; and incentives for early and sustained mentoring, especially for traditionally underrepresented populations. Supporting innovative K–12 and after-school curricula to introduce technological awareness topics, expand adoption of transformative technological breakthroughs, and engage K–12 students and teachers to increase student interest in cybersecurity careers. Increasing the capacity of the U.S. education enterprise to produce cybersecurity professionals and expanding adaptability in critical areas such as the secure use of AI, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and emerging wireless technologies. This includes continuous reskilling of the workforce in order to keep up with the rapidly evolving IT technologies and providing funding to the academic research community—for both pure and applied research—to create and expand cybersecurity programs aligned to near-term development of enabling fields identified in this plan. Expanding postsecondary cybersecurity faculty by offering fellowships, retraining existing faculty, and preparing nonacademic researchers to become faculty. Preparing future scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the university laboratory to accelerate the economic and societal benefits of research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization by building a more entrepreneurial R&D workforce to support innovation and use the advancements described in the other priority areas of this Plan. This includes identifying grand challenges to foster innovation among faculty and students and to promote multistakeholder coordination and linkages; such challenges may include emergence of hypertransformative technologies that may necessitate changes in learning processes or a large realignment of education with newly identified needs of the future workforce. R&D Goals • Accelerate adoption of a modern taxonomy of the cybersecurity workforce, such as the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education—Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. 27 Conduct research on effective models to educate individuals of different backgrounds and ages to protect themselves from cyber threats and inappropriate content on the Internet. 25 26 27 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/STEM-Education-Strategic-Plan-2018.pdf https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-160v1 https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-181 – 22 –