CENIC Panel Cybersecurity Workforce Development in R&E Environments

Along with my colleagues Matt Bishop (UC Davis), Cynthia Irvine (Naval Postgraduate School), David Rusting (University of California CISO) and modertated by Sean Piesert (UC Davis), I partipated in a panel discussion titled Cybersecurity Workforce Development in R&E Environments at the CENIC Annual Conference.

I found it to be a really fascinating, with some key insights being:

• We’re too narrowly focused on producing experts, when all computing majors (at a minimum) should be receive security education;
• Even when producing attempt to produce “experts,” the traditional CS curriculum fails to attract and retain a diverse population of students;
• There is no common core for computer security; instead there are wide, and sometimes conflicting, sets of learning objectives;
• and, we have a long way to go!