Pipeline for cybersecurity careers aligned to national standards

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $331,551 Project Grant under the STEM Education (CFDA 47.076) program to San Jacinto Community College District to establish a Security Operations Center (SOC) and enhance the college's cybersecurity curriculum. The goal of this 3-year project, starting on June 15, 2024, is to incorporate SOC exercises into the cybersecurity program and align the curriculum to national standards. This will create a reproducible academic pipeline to produce qualified cybersecurity technicians prepared to enter the workforce upon graduation, addressing the well-documented national need for skilled cybersecurity professionals. The project will provide students with hands-on experience monitoring live feeds from the college's security systems, evaluating the training process to develop a roadmap for other institutions to implement similar programs.

Abstract

The national need for skilled cybersecurity professionals is well-documented. Although many two-year colleges have developed programs to train cybersecurity technicians, most employers will not hire candidates who lack job experience. The goal of this project is to establish a security operations center (SOC) for student use, to incorporate SOC exercises into the cybersecurity curriculum, and to align the resulting curriculum to national standards. The creation of an SOC coupled with a state-of-the-art cybersecurity curriculum will result in a reproducible academic pipeline that can produce qualified cybersecurity technicians who are prepared to enter the cybersecurity workforce upon graduation. A larger, more varied cybersecurity workforce will result in a safer global digital landscape. This project will develop a model for training cybersecurity students in response to employer feedback. By building a curriculum steeped in hands on experience in an SOC this project will advance our understanding of how to prepare highly employable cybersecurity graduates in the gulf coast region. The SOC will provide live feeds from the college?s firewall, intrusion detection system, endpoint detection software, and threat intelligence platforms for students to monitor. This project will be designed to train students, and to document the training process to provide a roadmap for other institutions to use. The evaluation plan will make use of both formative and summative components to assess the fidelity and effectiveness of the program. This project is funded by the advanced technological education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.