The White House on Monday released a strategy designed to grow and strengthen the nation’s cyber workforce and includes commitments from the intelligence community to bolster local communities with assessing their cyber risks.
The National Security Agency will support a pilot initiative through four grants to create four new cyber clinics at U.S. colleges and universities in Nevada, Minnesota, Louisiana and Virginia to support communities and small governments with cyber risk assessment and planning assistance. The grants will also help more than 200 students to develop cyber competencies in supervised learning environments.
The pilot effort will be conducted under the National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) program, which the agency will drive to increase the number of NCAE-C designated institutions to 460 by the end of 2024 and serve about 174,000 students annually.
The White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) is also directed to increase the diversity of internship applicants by finding new ways to recruit from underrepresented communities. The ONCD will also oversee implementation of the strategy.
The National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy (NCWES) contains four pillars that include ensuring all citizens have foundational cyber skills, transforming cyber education, grow and enhance the cyber workforce, and strengthen the federal cyber workforce.
The strategy highlights that 92 percent of jobs require digital skills but that 13 percent of American workers have none and 18 percent have only limited skills.