(ISC)² survey: To recruit cyber talent, feds must make up in training, benefits, what jobs lack in pay

Federal agencies pay an average of $7,000 a year less to cybersecurity personnel than their private sector counterparts, so they need to offer training and other benefits while recruiting more from overlooked groups like women and minorities, according to one of the largest regular surveys of information security workers. The eighth biannual Global Information Security Workforce Study, done by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education and sponsored by contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, cyber recruiters Alta Associates and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium or (ISC)², was unveiled Tuesday at (ISC)²’s conference CyberSecureGov in Washington, D.C. The U.S. government “must enhance its benefits … to attract future hires and retain existing personnel given its fierce competition with the private sector for skilled workers and the unprecedented demand,” said Dan Waddell, (ISC)² managing director, North America. “Unfortunately,” he added, “the layers of complexity involved in fulfilling that goal are significant.” “Thanks to the record-number of federal GISWS […]

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U.S. Air Force invests millions this month on cyberweapons projects

Three of the United States’ largest military contractors each won multimillion-dollar projects in the last month to boost American offensive power in the cyber domain. Raytheon, Northrop Grunman and Booz Allen Hamilton have all seen their stock prices rise 10 to 20 percent since the November 2016 U.S. election. Investors sprinted to military contractors based on Trump’s promises for higher spending on — among other warfighting capabilities — the cyber domain. Many of the world’s biggest weapons manufacturers are expanding aggressively into offensive and defensive cybersecurity in search of the same level of profitability found in building conventional weapons systems. Raytheon will build the Air Force’s newest Cyber Command and Control Mission System (C3MS) operating location — at San Antonio’s Lackland Air Force Base — after winning an $8.5 million contract this week. Lackland is home to the 24th Air Force, the organization tasked with operating and defending the Air Force’s networks. It’s […]

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Six big vendors dominate a fragmented federal cyber market, numbers show

Federal procurement of cybersecurity goods and services is highly fragmented, according to new research published this week, with more than 7,600 different companies winning U.S. government contracts during the past six years. But despite this long tail of small awards, the market space is dominated by a handful of familiar names. Only six contractors — Leidos, Northrup Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Hewlett Packard and General Dynamics — earned a billion dollars or more in cyber contracts from the U.S. government in fiscal 2011-16, according to the new report from Govini, a consultancy that crunches procurement numbers. “Acquisition of cybersecurity solutions is highly fragmented now,” Arun Sankaran, Govini’s director of professional services, told CyberScoop. He was the lead author of the report, which analyzes the $45.9 billion obligated between 2011-2016 in three categories of federal cybersecurity spending: defense, resilience and threat analytics. Spending rose significantly in the second half of that period, from an average of $6.3 billion […]

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Intelligence community seeks answers in aftermath of Harold Martin case

The arrest and then recent indictment of Harold T. Martin III, a 20-year veteran of the intelligence community who is accused of carrying out the biggest theft of classified information in U.S. history, is causing leaders on Capitol Hill and in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to re-examine exactly how the government defends […]

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Threatpost News Wrap, October 7, 2016

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss this week’s Virus Bulletin conference in Denver and CNBC’s Cambridge Cyber Summit at MIT, the NSA contractor arrest, APT false flags, and more. Continue reading Threatpost News Wrap, October 7, 2016

BREAKING! Another NSA Contractor Arrested For Stealing ‘Secret’ Documents

Another Edward Snowden?

The FBI has secretly busted another National Security Agency (NSA) contractor over a massive secret data theft.

The United States Justice Department charged Harold Thomas Martin, 51, with theft of highly classified government … Continue reading BREAKING! Another NSA Contractor Arrested For Stealing ‘Secret’ Documents