Tag Archives: workforce

NSA contractor indicted for fudging timesheet

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A contractor who has been working at the National Security Agency since 2017 has been charged with five counts of falsifying her timesheet, according to an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court of Maryland. The contractor, Melissa Heyer, allegedly filed hours claiming to have been working in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), meant to function as a highly classified work environment, when she was actually elsewhere. She allegedly filed these false claims on five separate occasions between May 2017 and July 2018. The false work Heyer claimed to have completed amounted to the government paying her and her company $100,000 in all, the indictment claims. The wages she falsely claimed to have earned amount to more than $7,000, according to the indictment. It wasn’t immediately clear if Heyer had admitted to the allegations in a review of her activity, or whether she denied or sought to cover it […]

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Cyber Command has cut hiring time for cybersecurity roles by nearly half, says DOD CISO

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Cyber Command has recently cut down the average amount of time it takes to hire someone by approximately 40 percent — 111 days to 44 days — under the Cyber Excepted Service program, according to the Department of Defense CISO Jack Wilmer. The CES program, intended to speed up cybersecurity candidate recruitment in the DOD through initiatives like allowing hiring managers to make direct hires, was originally authorized in 2016 by Congress. The CES also establishes market-based pay scales and allows hiring with or without public notification or vacancy announcements, both intended to decrease red tape in the Pentagons’ hiring process. Wilmer said the decrease has given the Department of Defense a leg up on private sector cybersecurity hiring. Since implementing the CES program, the Pentagon has seen fewer cases of candidates leaving DOD jobs on the table for the private sector. “That is a huge win,” Wilmer said while speaking Thursday at the 2019 Workforce […]

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With workforce in mind, bipartisan bill proposes incentives for cybersecurity education, and more

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The HACKED Act is actually about making sure people don’t get hacked. The bipartisan bill — with the full title “The Harvesting American Cybersecurity Knowledge through Education Act” — was introduced Tuesday by four senators who say it would boost cybersecurity education and expand workforce training. The legislation comes as the Trump administration, Congress and industry have all taken steps to boost the cybersecurity workforce through training, recruitment and retention. “America is facing serious cyberthreats every day in today’s increasingly connected world, yet there is a serious shortage of workers needed to confront this urgent challenge,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., one of the cosponsors and the Commerce Committee’s ranking member, said in a statement. “The bipartisan HACKED Act of 2019 would help address this by training cybersecurity educators and skilling American workers to do these jobs, as well as increasing coordination on these issues throughout the government.” The bill includes proposals to incentivize recruitment of […]

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15 major companies announce effort to tackle cybersecurity workforce recruitment issues

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Fifteen major companies, including the Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, and PwC, announced Wednesday they are joining together to change their cybersecurity job descriptions and requirements to attract more talent to the 3 million cybersecurity job openings that are expected to be available over the next two years. Specifically, the companies — which are part of the Aspen Cybersecurity Group — are focused on nixing requirements that candidates have four-year bachelor’s degrees and gender-biased job descriptions. “A bachelors degree is actually not a good proxy for whether you have the talent,” Chair of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber & Technology Program John Carlin told CyberScoop. “There’s plenty of talented people out there but we need to figure out better ways to identify them and train them.” The group, which also includes AIG, Cloudflare, the Cyber Threat Alliance, Duke Energy, IronNet, Johnson & Johnson, Northrop Grumman, Symantec, Unisys, and Verizon, came together over […]

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Government cyber reskilling programs are just getting started, federal CIO says

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Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent says she expects the government’s Cybersecurity Reskilling Academies to keep expanding over the next few years. As part of the Federal Chief Information Officer Council’s work to bolster the federal cyber workforce, the government has gone through two rounds of academies since last year. The first cohort had over 1,500 applications for just 25 slots. Counting the second round of applications, the academies have had more than 2,300 federal employees apply in all, Kent said at a Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity conference Wednesday. “That says something about the level of interest across the federal government,” Kent said. She added that agency feedback has been key to improving the federal cybersecurity workforce, with the administration focused on improving the skill level inside those agencies, particularly in those who primarily work outside of the tech sector. It’s “not to improve just our technology workforce, but our […]

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NSA-approved cybersecurity law and policy course now available online

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Anyone who is interested in cybersecurity law and policy can now take an online course that was partly shaped by National Security Agency. The course, which can be accessed through Penn State University’s Clark Center, touches on international and domestic cybersecurity law, cyber risk and technical details like how smartphones function, according to Anne McKenna, a Penn State professor who organized the course. James Houck, director of Penn State’s Center for Security Research and Education, told CyberScoop that program will serve as a primer to the legal and technical details of offensive and defensive cyber-operations. “What we’re trying to do … is create a framework for people who are trying to be introduced to cyber law, to offensive, defensive cyber operations, and for them to learn the fundamentals, the framework — and in our case legal authorities for how these work,” Houck said. Houck clarified that although the NSA put out […]

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Army Cyber Command is trying to become an information warfare force

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U.S. Army Cyber Command could soon have a new identity. Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty said this week he wants his military outfit, dedicated to electronic warfare and information operations, to be renamed as the “Army Information Warfare Command.” The rechristening would better represent a new military mission, he said, and come at a time when Army cyber personnel increasingly deal with troll farms on social media, disrupt ISIS operations, and work to confuse international adversaries’ understanding of U.S. military units’ location. “The intent is to provide a proposal that will change us from Army Cyber Command to Army Information Warfare Command because we believe that is a more accurate descriptor of what I am being asked to do on a daily basis,” Fogarty said at the AFCEA TechNet conference in Augusta, Georgia this week. But this change, which Fogarty said he intends to push internally at the Department of Defense over the next two months, is more than just a new […]

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‘This isn’t IAD 2.0’: NSA’s new Cybersecurity Directorate plots its mission

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The National Security Agency has started to lay the groundwork and select the leadership for its new Cybersecurity Directorate, which will be focused on fusing together signals intelligence with the agency’s cybersecurity protection mission, CyberScoop has learned. Neal Ziring, who most recently served as the NSA’s technical director for capabilities, will be the Cybersecurity Directorate’s technical director, an NSA spokesperson tells CyberScoop. Dave Frederick, the NSA’s chief of strategic counter cyber operations, will be the new deputy director, an NSA spokesperson said. In his most recent role, Ziring was responsible for acting as a liaison to both private industry and other government agencies. Ziring previously served as the technical director of the agency’s defensive operations directorate, the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD). Frederick was responsible for coordinating defensive and offensive cyber missions. NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone announced the new Cybersecurity Directorate earlier this week. It will be run by Anne […]

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U.S. Cyber Command simulated a seaport cyberattack to test digital readiness

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When U.S. Cyber Command simulated a cyberattack against a seaport last month, military personnel hunted for adversaries who appeared to be using malware against a critical trade hub in an updated version of its annual exercises. The annual weeklong test, known as “Cyber Flag,” is meant to help cyber staffers better defend against critical infrastructure cyberattacks, military commanders involved in the exercise told reporters in a briefing Tuesday. By imitating a cyberattack that blocked the seaport’s ability to move cargo, potentially affecting inernational trade, military leaders tested their readiness for a real-world attack, and looked for ways to improve their response. The simulation also included officials from throughout the U.S. government and from allied partners to emphasize stronger coordination. “Cyber Flag is the command’s annual tactical exercise series that features teams working on keyboard against a live opposing force,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, Cyber Command’s director of exercises and training. “The environment is really […]

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Trump’s Pentagon pick ‘confident’ in 2020 election security

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Defense secretary nominee Mark Esper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that although there is still work to be done, he is confident in the security of the 2020 presidential elections. “We are more and more confident that the 2020 elections will be unfettered,” Esper said. “But we always will have a lot of work to do because people will always want to influence our elections.” The 2020 elections remain a target of state and non-state cyber actors, a senior intelligence official told reporters last month in a briefing. Esper, who has been serving as secretary of the U.S. Army since 2017, highlighted U.S. Cyber Command’s capabilities while discussing election security. Efforts made in the buildup to the 2018 midterm elections left the U.S. with an improved posture than years prior, he said. Some of the command’s efforts to defend the midterm elections in 2018 included deploying soldiers to […]

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