Despite assertions and increased discussions about the effectiveness of undergraduate cybersecurity education, the evidence has been primarily anecdotal. Dialogue about cybersecurity education has tended to focus more on technical skills and less on soft skills. This research effort contended that cybersecurity experts with technical skills also…

By 2020, the global need for information security professionals is expected to reach six million and the shortfall in meeting that need is expected to be over one and a half million. Not only is there a shortage of cybersecurity professionals but those who are graduates of a cybersecurity program are not adequately skilled to assume significant…

"Invest to Improve: The Cybersecurity Talent Deficit" provides recommendations for cybersecurity stakeholders--employers, government agencies, and higher education institutions--to enable regional partnerships to meet today's cybersecurity skills needs. This report combines data from a 2017 Gallup survey of business executives and higher…

Through the collaboration of its members, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) launched the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI) to support business-higher education partnerships that co-design community college and university pathways to careers in fields critical to innovation and national security, as well as maximize…

Employers want applicants with experience, even for entry-level cybersecurity roles. Universities traditionally help students gain cybersecurity experience by hiring them for on-campus jobs or by matching job seekers to employers for off-campus work. A third option is described in this paper in which universities bring external companies on…

This document records testimony from a joint meeting of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection and the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development regarding public-private solutions to educating a cyber workforce. Member statements were presented by: (1) Honorable John Ratcliffe, Chairman, Subcommittee on…

In the United States, apprenticeships have traditionally been considered the purview of the construction industry and a handful of other trades. But recent interest in developing nontraditional career paths has led to an expansion of apprenticeships into industries such as healthcare, childcare, advanced manufacturing, public safety, hospitality,…

Community colleges are using grants and workforce partnerships to train a new generation of technology workers. In September, the Obama administration awarded $450 million in grants to nearly 270 community colleges that have partnered with more than 400 employers nationally. It was the final installment of a four-year, $2 billion competitive grant…

The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) has achieved particular success in operationalizing the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI) in Maryland around cybersecurity. Leveraging its membership of corporate CEOs, university presidents, and government agency leaders, BHEF partnered with the University System of Maryland to…

Within the information technology sector, cybersecurity is considered its own supersector. As information becomes increasingly digitized and a growing array of transactions can be completed in the cloud, people, governments and enterprises become increasingly more vulnerable. The Identity Theft Resources Center (ITRC) reports nearly 5,000 breaches…

BHEF has achieved particular success in operationalizing its National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI) in Maryland focusing on cybersecurity. Leveraging its membership of corporate CEOs, university presidents and government agency leaders, BHEF partnered with the University System of Maryland to build a system-wide response to the…

The United States faces a pressing national security and competitiveness challenge rooted in a shortage of a diverse, highly skilled workforce, particularly in vital cross-disciplinary fields such as data science and analytics, cybersecurity, and information technology. To address this challenge, Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) launched the…

Partnerships between higher education and business have long been an important part of the academic landscape, but often they are based on shorter-term transactional objectives rather than on longer-term strategic goals. BHEF's National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative brings together business and academia at the institutional,…

This is the first in a series of Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) playbooks intended to assist companies, higher education institutions, private philanthropies, membership associations, professional societies, government agencies, and other stakeholders seeking to understand the potential value of investing in coordinated strategic,…

Social engineering is a large problem in our modern technological world, but while conceptually understood, it is harder to teach compared to traditional pen testing techniques. This research details a class project where students implemented a phishing exercise against real-world targets. Through cooperation with an external corporate partner,…