The Future Directions 2022 Summit evaluated the growing cybersecurity workforce gap and community colleges’ role in cybersecurity education. The summit was to gauge how far cybersecurity measures have evolved over the past two decades. Stakeholders and leaders in cybersecurity peeked into the role of community colleges in handling online threats, a growing need of the nation.
The summit was hosted by the National Cybersecurity Training & Education Center (NCyTE) at the Whatcom Community College (WCC), titled “Protecting Information: The Role of Community Colleges in Cybersecurity Education,” the summit focused on gauging how the system has evolved to cater to the needs of the ever-growing workforce demand in correlation with cybersecurity threats.
NCyTE and Whatcom Community College members evaluated how community colleges handle the nation’s extreme shortage of well-qualified cybersecurity professionals. Topics including curriculum development, training ahead of current trends, managing cyber-attacks, and enabling the students to face work-life challenges in the concerned area were discussed.
“As we continue to see, the threat to cyber security, nationally and worldwide, is a persistent, invasive, and accelerating issue across all sectors,” said the president of Whatcom Community College, Kathi Hiyane-Brown. The discussion was contributed to by over a dozen community college faculty. They gave insights from research studies on the examination of community colleges, input from the government, achievements so far, and hindrances in creating a cybersecurity workforce, among others. New topics were discussed, and experts, faculty, and keynote speakers proposed alternative methods to tackle existing cyber threats.
Will Markow, manager of Client Strategy – Analytics at burning Glass Technologies, shed light on how the cybersecurity workforce gap has left over 700,000 positions vacant in the U.S. Moreover, areas like innovative outreach strategies and real-world curriculum programming with necessary resources, practices, and reach to spread awareness among the new students were discussed. Other facets of the truth related to the consequences and problems faced by the system found a place in this discussion that reiterated the need for better awareness and steps to keep pace with the changing conditions.
The Future Directions 2022 summit was partnered with the National Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance (CSSIA) and the National CyberWatch Center. The 2022 summit was co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Association of Community Colleges.
