Visible to the public Cybersecurity Career Engagement

Submitted by Katie Dey on Mon, 12/03/2012 - 6:54pm. Contributors:

ABSTRACT

Proponents of immersive, cybersecurity competitions suggest that they are effective tools for increasing participant awareness, interest and engagement in cybersecurity careers. Millions of dollars in federal and private investment have been spent on the development of competitions such as: CyberCIEGE from Naval Postgraduate School; CyberPatriot sponsored by the Air Force Association using CyberNEXS developed by SAIC; Cyber Quest and NetWars developed by The SANS Institute; DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge from the DoD Cyber Crime Center; and Panopoly developed by University of Texas, San Antonio. Recently, several NSF Advanced Technological Education Centers collaborated to launch the National Cyber League, which provides weekly competitions leading to an NCAA March--Madness style playoff system and a national championship.

Although anecdotal evidence suggests that competitions may be a positive approach to providing enriched, authentic learning experiences and identifying talent, we lack systematic empirical analysis of the role of cybersecurity competitions for increasing awareness, interest, and engagement in cybersecurity careers. Furthermore, it is uncertain how well the competitions serve to develop a pipeline of talent for cybersecurity professions among underrepresented populations.

The purpose of this study is to fill this gap in our understanding by exploring cybersecurity career engagement among participants in the National Cyber League Fall 2012 pilot season.

The poster will:

  1. Provide data and statistics on cybersecurity competitions in general and NCL specifically;

  2. Summarize current empirical research on the topic;

  3. Describe the approach taken in the current research--in--progress; and

  4. Solicit feedback on the specific project and general research priorities for examining cybersecurity competitions.

BIO

Diana L. Burley is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at The George Washington University (GW). Dr. Burley joined GW in 2007 and has served as the inaugural Chair of the Human and Organizational Learning Department and as Director of the Executive Leadership Doctoral Program. Prior to joining the GW faculty, she served as a Program Officer in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at The National Science Foundation (NSF) where she managed multi-million dollar grant programs designed to increase the capacity of the U.S. higher education enterprise to produce scientists. At NSF, she served as the lead program officer of the Cyber Corps program and based on her work, Dr. Burley was honored by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council and the Colloquium on Information Systems Security Education for outstanding efforts toward the development of the federal cyber security workforce. Most recently, Dr. Burley has been appointed to the 2012 State of Virginia Joint Commission on Technology & Science (JCOTS) Cyber Security Committee and as the co-chair of the National Research Council's Cybersecurity Professionalization for the Nation: Criteria for Future Decision Making for Cybersecurity Committee. She is the co-PI for research of the NSF-funded National CyberWatch Center. In addition, she serves as a GW representative to the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) - a consortium of leading institutions dedicated to strengthening the cyber infrastructure of the United States; and a Research Scholar in the GW Institute for Public Policy. She holds a BA in Economics from the Catholic University of America; an M.S. in Public Management and Policy, an M.S. in Organization Science, and a Ph.D. in Organization Science and Information Technology from Carnegie Mellon University where she studied as a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow in Public Policy.


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Cybersecurity Career Engagement
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