CISA Publishes New Cybersecurity Career Awareness Challenges

WASHINGTON – The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published new micro-challenges today that are now part of the Cyber Careers Pathway Tool, an interactive tool that enables an individual to explore the 52 work roles in the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework.  

For K-12 students and individuals looking to reskill or transition from non-cyber career, CISA’s micro-challenges provide an opportunity to experience first-hand the knowledge, skills, and tasks performed in the top cybersecurity workforce roles. As a new feature within Cyber Careers Pathway Tool, the micro-challenges consist of 14 hands-on experiences that allow users, whether self-paced or through instruction, to complete several core cybersecurity workforce tasks, while exploring the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the tasks. Users are led through an interactive learning environment and provided information about the workforce role and cybersecurity education, training, and career opportunities once the challenge is completed.  

“Helping individuals see the opportunities, challenges and rewards of a cybersecurity career, especially K-12 students, is critically important to CISA,” said Acting Chief Learning Officer Chris Lein. “As a part of our Cyber Career Pathways Tool, we are proud to release micro-challenges that can help prospective workers understand the breadth of cybersecurity careers, demystify some of the core tasks for the workforce roles, and enable all users to see themselves in a cybersecurity workforce role. CISA is focused on developing a robust pipeline of highly skilled cybersecurity professionals to meet the workforce demands of today and the future.”  

Based on the top NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework categories and roles, the micro-challenges are aligned to ten cybersecurity workforce roles: Technical Support Specialist, System Administrator, Network Operations Specialist, Systems Security Analyst, Database Administrator, Data Analyst, Cyber Defense Analyst, Cyber Defense Incident Responder, Vulnerability Analyst, and Law Enforcement/Counterintelligence Forensics Analyst.  

For more information on other cybersecurity career development resources offered by CISA, visit National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies (NICCS).