Cyber Operations Education: Building Capacity in a Priority Area

IT systems are, without a doubt, fundamental to almost all facets of modern life, including government operations, commerce and manufacturing, financial systems, education, communications, energy production and distribution, and transportation. However, given the global connectedness of such systems, they are under constant attack from a variety of actors ranging from automated malware and so-called script kiddies, to organized crime and nation states around the world. A great deal of work has been performed to improve cyber security education, with the dual aims of building a workforce to protect our critical infrastructure, and producing researchers capable of meeting the challenges apparent today, and those that we will face in the future. This paper describes some of the challenges associated with developing educational capacity in cyber operations and some approaches that can help to mitigate these challenges.