Cybersecurity Workforce: Staffing Needs, Skills Requirements and Coding Procedures (Business Issues, Competition and Entrepreneurship)

The security of federal information systems and data is critical to the nation’s safety, prosperity, and well-being. However, federal systems and networks are inherently at risk because of their complexity, technological diversity, and geographic dispersion. Further, threats to federal information technology (IT) infrastructure continue to grow in number and sophistication, posing a risk to the reliable functioning of our government. A key component of the government’s ability to mitigate and respond to cybersecurity threats is having a qualified, well-trained cybersecurity workforce. The objectives of chapter 1 are to determine the extent to which federal agencies have assigned work roles for positions performing IT, cybersecurity, or cyber-related functions and describe the steps federal agencies took to identify work roles of critical need. As reported in chapter 2, DHS has identified, categorized, and assigned employment codes to its cybersecurity positions and identified its cybersecurity workforce areas of critical need. Chapter 3 assessed whether: OPM developed a coding structure and procedures for assigning codes to cybersecurity positions and submitted a progress report to Congress; CFO Act agencies submitted complete, reliable baseline assessments of their cybersecurity workforces; and CFO Act agencies established procedures to assign codes to cybersecurity positions.