DOD Hosts International Exchange on Shaping Cybersecurity Workforce

A senior Protection Division official hosted authorities officers, lecturers and entrepreneurs from Indonesia for a dialogue on how the Pentagon is aligning its cyber workforce technique to fulfill the calls for of a quickly evolving area.  

Patrick Johnson, director of the DOD Chief Info Officer’s Workforce Innovation Directorate, offered an in-depth overview of the Pentagon’s cyber workforce framework and imaginative and prescient for recruiting and retaining prime expertise to fulfill the calls for of the long run.   

The alternate was held as a part of the State Division’s Worldwide Customer Management Program, or IVLP, which goals to develop lasting relationships between rising international leaders and their counterparts in the USA. Subsequent week, representatives from DOD CIO will host a bunch from Japan who’re within the U.S. to debate methods to boost cybersecurity in Japan.  

“Within the cyber area, the human being is the weapon system,” Johnson stated, underscoring the vital significance of securing the worldwide networks that permeate each day life in each the private and non-private sectors.   

He stated the nation’s defenders should more and more account for each the kinetic and nonkinetic results that form the trendy battlefield. He famous, for instance, {that a} nefarious cyber actor may single-handedly take down the world’s most superior fighter plane with out firing a single shot. 

In 2023, DOD printed its technique to align the division’s efforts to establish, recruit, develop and retain a data-literate and technology-adept cyber workforce to make sure the U.S. maintains its warfighting edge.   

The division has additionally laid out its framework to form the cyber workforce by means of personnel qualification, educational outreach {and professional} growth; and it has carried out the Cyber Excepted Service, which faucets into enhanced recruitment and retention authorities. 

However the challenges introduced by the quickly altering cyber area aren’t distinctive to DOD, as this week’s dialogue highlighted. 

The alternate offered a chance for the members to debate shared challenges that span the private and non-private sectors in each the U.S. and Indonesia. 

The members mentioned frequent bureaucratic hurdles in in each nations that problem public sector recruiters, who typically battle prolonged hiring processes and better salaries supplied by non-public employers.

Additionally they mentioned the altering metrics used to gauge candidate {qualifications} for cyber jobs.   

Al Akbar Rahmadillah, founding father of Sobat Cyber Indonesia, highlighted the crucial to faucet into sensible {qualifications} gained by means of casual, hands-on coaching.   

That sentiment is just not distinctive to Indonesia’s non-public sector. Johnson stated DOD is more and more seeking to leverage performance-based {qualifications}, reasonably than formal schooling.   

Contributors additionally talked about the impression of competitors stemming from Indonesia’s massive inhabitants of younger professionals has on recruiting cyber expertise. 

That back-and-forth alternate is exactly the extent of dialogue the IVLP is designed to foster.   

Since 1940, the IVLP has hosted greater than 225,000 members for exchanges centered on matters starting from younger individuals and girls’s management to selling cybersecurity and combatting transnational crime. 

Alfian Linux, chief govt officer of Xtend Indonesia, a personal sector expertise agency, stated his expertise collaborating has been invaluable.   

“Everybody is aware of that the large firms and the expertise earlier than has come from the USA.,” he stated, including that he hopes the IVLP discussions will open doorways for Indonesian corporations to work successfully alongside U.S. corporations. 

However Johnson, who has hosted an IVLP cohort from Iraq as a part of this system, stated the U.S. additionally advantages immensely from the alternate.   

“Within the cyber area, the expertise scarcity is international,” he stated, including that each nation has info expertise infrastructure that have to be defended.  

Johnson stated it’s incumbent on nations to study from each other to beat urgent challenges.   

“I feel we have to take it severely [and] take that chance to speak to sensible individuals from exterior our personal little sphere,” he stated. “The world has quite a bit to supply.”