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Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Specialized Curricula in Cyber Defense

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Specialized Curricula in Cyber Defense More specialized cybersecurity education programs are needed to address workforce needs, but it is unclear which knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) fulfil industry needs. We interviewed 48 professionals within four cyber defense specialty areas: (1) Cyber Network Defense Analysis, (2) Cyber Network Defense Infrastructure Support, (3) Incident Response, and (4) Vulnerability Assessment and Management. The professionals rated a number of specialized KSAs along two dimensions: how important the KSA was to their job and how difficult the KSA was to learn. Overall, communication and other non-technical skills were rated as being very important for all cyber defense jobs. Findings indicated that, for some specialty areas, technical knowledge and skills vary considerably between jobs and so the ability to teach oneself is more valuable than proficiency in any one KSA. Findings may be used to inform the development of general cybersecurity curricula, as well as curricula that focus on Cyber Network Defense Analysis, Cyber Network Defense Infrastructure Support, or Vulnerability Assessment and Management. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) Association for Computing Machinery

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Specialized Curricula in Cyber Defense

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Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Specialized Curricula in Cyber Defense

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Specialized Curricula in Cyber Defense: Results from Interviews with Cyber Professionals MIRIAM E. ARMSTRONG, KEITH S. JONES, and AKBAR SIAMI NAMIN, Texas Tech University DAVID C. NEWTON, Federal Aviation Administration & Texas Tech University More specialized cybersecurity education programs are needed to address workforce needs, but it is unclear which knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) fulfil industry needs. We interviewed 48 professionals within four cyber defense specialty areas: (1) Cyber Network Defense Analysis, (2) Cyber Network Defense Infras- tructure Support, (3) Incident Response, and (4) Vulnerability Assessment and Management. The professionals rated a number of specialized KSAs along two dimensions: how important the KSA was to their job and how difficult the KSA was to learn. Overall, communication and other non-technical skills were rated as being very important for all cyber defense jobs. Findings indicated that, for some specialty areas, technical knowledge and skills vary considerably between jobs and so the ability to teach oneself is more valuable than proficiency in any one KSA. Findings may be used to inform the development of general cybersecurity curricula, as well as curricula that focus on Cyber Network Defense Analysis, Cyber Network Defense Infrastructure Support, or Vulnerability Assessment and Management. CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy • Social and professional topics → Computing education pro- grams; Employment issues; Additional Key Words and Phrases: Cyber-defense, cybersecurity education, curricula development, NICE cybersecurity workforce framework ACM Reference format: Miriam E. Armstrong, Keith S. Jones, Akbar Siami Namin, and David C. Newton. 2020. Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Specialized Curricula in Cyber Defense: Results from Interviews with Cyber Professionals. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ. 20, 4, Article 29 (November 2020), 25 pages....
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Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 ACM
ISSN
1946-6226
eISSN
1946-6226
DOI
10.1145/3421254
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

More specialized cybersecurity education programs are needed to address workforce needs, but it is unclear which knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) fulfil industry needs. We interviewed 48 professionals within four cyber defense specialty areas: (1) Cyber Network Defense Analysis, (2) Cyber Network Defense Infrastructure Support, (3) Incident Response, and (4) Vulnerability Assessment and Management. The professionals rated a number of specialized KSAs along two dimensions: how important the KSA was to their job and how difficult the KSA was to learn. Overall, communication and other non-technical skills were rated as being very important for all cyber defense jobs. Findings indicated that, for some specialty areas, technical knowledge and skills vary considerably between jobs and so the ability to teach oneself is more valuable than proficiency in any one KSA. Findings may be used to inform the development of general cybersecurity curricula, as well as curricula that focus on Cyber Network Defense Analysis, Cyber Network Defense Infrastructure Support, or Vulnerability Assessment and Management.

Journal

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Nov 13, 2020

Keywords: Cyber-defense

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