The Few, the Proud, the Cyber Workforce

Have you ever wanted to be the hero in an action movie, saving the world and getting the girl? As a kid, did you dream of stopping bad guys and protecting the country when you grow up? Well, in today’s world, heroes are not just the people jumping out of burning buildings or shooting at the enemy — the next generation heroes are the cybersecurity professionals around the country. Today’s terrorists do not just attack people, they attack information systems and financial institutions. Tomorrow’s wars will be fought not just with guns and tanks, but also with computers and drones.

So why does this matter to me, I sometimes call IT support just to turn my computer on? Well, even if you are not a 1s and 0s person (tech talk for a computer-savvy person because computers perform all of their processes through strings of codes with nothing more than 0 and 1, but I digress), as a homeland security professional you need to recognize the severity of the threat. In 2016, over 70 percent of organizations report being compromised by successful cyber attacks. Many of these attacks were on critical infrastructure, so if you are a first responder you must be ready for the next power grid attack or denial of service attack to 9–1–1 systems. As our world becomes increasingly digitalized, our cyber vulnerabilities increase so we all must be ready for these consequences.

If you are a Centennial interested in a career in national security or homeland security, you have endless possibilities and endless opportunities to make a difference, especially in cybersecurity. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) “operates at the intersection of government, private sector, and international network defense communities, applying unique analytic perspectives, ensuring shared situational awareness, and orchestrating synchronized response, mitigation, and recovery efforts while protecting the Constitutional and privacy rights of Americans in both the cybersecurity and communications domains.” If you want to protect individuals, businesses and governments around the world from bad guys then you do not need to work for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or be train with Seal Team Six. Instead, become a next generation hero and join the fast-paced environment of cybersecurity.

Now, I cannot promise you that life is quite like what you see on CIS: Cyber, but there is still some pretty cool stuff for you to do. Did you know DHS has developed a “cyber weather map,” also known as Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS), which helps forecast future cyber attacks by identifying current trends across the globe?

As DHS puts it, “AIS is a part of the Department’s effort to create an ecosystem where as soon as a company or federal agency observes an attempted compromise, the indicator will be shared in real time with all of our partners, protecting them from that particular threat. That means adversaries can only use an attack once, which increases their costs and ultimately reduces the prevalence of cyber attacks. While AIS won’t eliminate sophisticated cyber threats, it will allow companies and federal agencies to concentrate more on them by clearing away less sophisticated attacks.”

AIS is one of many programs DHS offers to the public and private sectors, in an effort to improve cybersecurity and strengthen cyber resilience. For those of you physical security or military folks, DHS has developed defense systems that may not invoke mental images of the Steel Curtain or Mount Mutombo, but these programs are improving quickly. For example, while agencies must manage their own cybersecurity, DHS helps federal agencies protect their systems using two programs: EINSTEIN (the name says it all) and Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM). Think of EINSTEIN as your perimeter defense and CDM as the interior protection. If you are a basketball fan, EINSTEIN is the guard or forward that defends the three point line, while CDM is your center that protects the paint when the other team beats the perimeter defenders. If that analogy does not get you excited, keep in mind how important these programs are to federal departments and agencies, keep in mind that these programs were used to uncover the breach of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) systems, which resulted in 22 million personnel files being compromised.

Maybe you are not into defense, but you love it when offenses put points on the board. Well maybe you would rather help the government by hacking the government and getting paid to do it. Last year, The Department of Defense conducted a hacking competition called “Hack the Pentagon.” The competition featured more than 1,400 eligible hackers and more than 250 submitted at least one vulnerability report. That is right, the Pentagon actually encouraged people to hack their systems and paid them if they were successful. In order to defend information systems, the federal government needs people that understand how to attack information systems so if you are an ethical hacker the government may still be the place for you

Overall, there is a lot going on in the cyber world and things will only get more interesting from here. Battles are being fought through computers every day so if you want to be the hero of tomorrow, you may need to pick up a keyboard and get to work today.