Air Force cyber recruitment focuses on attitude then a language-like aptitude, the U.S. Air Force Chief information Officer (CIO) and Director of Cyberspace Strategy and Policy for the Office of Information Dominance said Thursday.
“So I view it more through the lens like our language aptitude tests that we give today. So we don’t give a language test in a specific language. What we do is we give a language-like test to assess aptitude for learning a language,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Higsby said at an Air Force Association presentation on the Air Force cyber strategy and policy.
“Aptitude aside, I will always tell you that attitude is always more important than aptitude. So even if I find somebody that would have great aptitude for leaning cyber, if their character is such that they would use that for nefarious purposes or for the purposes of personal gain, I probably don’t want them on my team,” Higsby added.
The Air Force is looking for recruits with the aptitude to learn as well as the attitude to go with learning, which they can sometimes discover going through basic military training and tech training, he said.
To attract top talent that already has some cyber knowledge, such as certain certifications, the service may let them join the Air Force at a higher grade than a basic high school or college graduate. This was recently expanded through a program for constructive credit. Higsby compared this kind of cyber recruitment to the medical field: when a certain specialty is needed, like a neurosurgeon in comparison, the schooling and experience needed to achieve that as a civilian would allow the person to join the Air Force at a higher grade than otherwise. That could mean joining the service as a captain rather than a lieutenant.
However, Higsby admitted retention is a “continuous challenge.”
“We will never be able to compete with industry when it comes to salaries or dollars. Where we can compete with industry is with the inspirational aspect of a young American that wants to do something great and remarkable for their nation and they’re not overly concerned with their pocketbook.”
This includes giving servicemen the opportunities to do things that would not legally be allowed to do on the civilian side, including advanced offensive cyber operations, Higsby said. “So we’re going after the coolness factor, I guess.”
Higsby also spoke of acculturation–the effort to change the culture of Air Force personnel, especially concerning cybersecurity risks. He compared it to the 1970s-80s acculturation of the importance of safety after several Air Force jets crashed due to lax safety procedures.
“So not surprisingly we’re now going to our Air Force Safety Center to say ‘Help us determine the way to acculturate cyber hygiene into the entire Air Force team.’ So that’s the angle we’re coming at it and it goes from how to detect and mitigate insider threats to not doing things on the network that you shouldn’t be doing.”
The Safety Center helped turn around the Air Force’s perspective on safety, from one of safety being an inhibitor to combat operation to becoming a capability multiplier for combat operations, Higsby said.
He also compared an airman clicking a suspicious link to cutting a hole in a wire at the military installation at Kandahar, Afghanistan.
“Why would an airman click on a link in an unsigned email and open up a whole network? It’s akin to cutting a hole in the wire–it gives the enemy an attack vector. That’s the kind of stuff that we’re talking about today and then putting that into our basic curriculum, starting as early as BMT (basic military training).”