Two-Year Graduates, Hackers Are Needed to Fill Multiplying Agency Cyber Slots, Says Microsoft Official
Federal and other government agencies seeking cybersecurity expertise need to dig much deeper than the usual engineering graduates from elite universities, a Microsoft executive said Thursday. The threats are growing and getting more sophisticated, a whole new set of military organizations is being created, and state and local governments are increasingly aware of their need to add protection, too, said Lewis Shepherd, the chief technology officer of the company’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments. But U.S. schools are turning out far too few students with the education needed, and companies and foreign governments are competing for the same cybersecurity talent, he said on an O'Reilly Gov 2.0 webcast.
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The skills of government experts -- even in “the real cathedrals” of the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the other intelligence agencies -- are “being quickly overtaken by the explosion of cybersecurity attacks and problems,” Shepherd said. The incumbents were trained and hired before network security was the priority it is now, he said. “We have enormous numbers of hiring opportunities, and one of the biggest fronts” is “in the new wave of national-security organizations that are addressing the problem,” Shepherd said.
"The competitiveness of the marketplace is exploding,” Shepherd said. “So that’s a challenge that’s only going to get worse for government hiring.” He said the unmet demand is creating “a vast sucking sound."
An “entirely new organization,” the military’s new Cyber Command, must staff up this year and next, coming along after the NSA and DHS’s National Cyber Security Division, which have dipped deeply into the employment market the past several years, Shepherd said. The NSA used to stand out as offering a coveted career path, but now it has much more competition, he said. There’s a “catch-up game the military is going to be playing for a pretty long time."
The U.S. government must look to graduates of two-year colleges, technology experts who look much more like the attackers than current employees do, and to retraining programs, Shepherd said. Agency recruiters need to follow Microsoft in looking at “an expanded universe,” but it’s often hard for them to “open their mind to recruiting from nontraditional institutions,” he said.
Community colleges and private two-year institutions are turning out students “with the motivation and education needed” to fight cyberthreats, Shepherd said. They need to be recognized as “a valid and important channel” for talent, he said. And “we need to think flexibly about how we hire the same kinds of individuals,” in skills, interests and partly mindset, as the attackers, Shepherd said.
Hacking organizations are competing with employers, too, Shepherd said. The “most proficient and talented” IP professionals in countries outside a more advanced tier that includes China and India end up in “nefarious types of activities” if they don’t land at startup companies, he said. Spy agencies have a running start in adapting their recruiting, from their experience in needing to be flexible and open-minded in finding human sources of intelligence, Shepherd said.
"The government does hire hackers, particularly the federal government,” Shepherd said. He said there’s “a big outreach effort to the hacking community, to the black-hat community,” especially by the FBI. “Look, I was in a punk band when I was 19,” Shepherd said. “Everybody wants to a wear a black T-shirt and fight against The Man.” But people also grow up and want to make a living, he said.
Still, the government isn’t always “seen as the world’s most exciting career path,” Shepherd said. The Obama administration is going in the right direction in increasing the appeal of government work to young people, but none of the efforts is “focused on the IT world,” he said. People “constantly need to whip and prod government into innovative practices,” Shepherd said. Agencies have to “emulate and follow the speed and flexibility of the private sector.”