Talent search is on for cybersecurity students

The U.S. government on Monday launched a national talent search for high school and college students interested in working in cybersecurity.

With the U.S. Cyber Challenge the goal is to find 10,000 young Americans to be "cyber guardians and cyber warriors," according to a statement from the Center for Strategic & International Studies, which is sponsoring the event.

"Mostly now we have people (in government) writing policies and reports about security rather than people who can do it," said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute. "And we're getting killed."

The government is launching a talent search for students with cybersecurity skills.

(Credit: Center for Strategic and International Studies)

The need for more security specialists in government has been acknowledged. President Obama said in May that the U.S. government "is not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions caused by Internet attacks. And last week, a study from the Partnership for Public Service concluded that shortages in federal cybersecurity workers and a lack of leadership threaten national security.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to be a target of Internet attacks. The latest public incident involved a series of denial of service attacks the that temporarily took down commercial and government Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea.

There are three competitions that make up the U.S. Cyber Challenge: CyberPatriot network defense high school competition conducted by the Air Force Association; DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center; and NetWars, a vulnerability discovery and exploitation competition conducted by the SANS Institute.

Candidates with promising skills will be invited to attend regional camps at local colleges beginning next year. The top candidates will be hired by the National Security Agency, the FBI, Defense Department, US-CERT, and the U.S. Department of Energy Laboratories.

[n3td3v]

Is this only U.S folks? I live in U.K

[monkeyfun14]

Why would the US want UK citizens defending their country?

[woganmay]

@monkeyfun14 Because a bunch of UK programmers created Uplink: Hacker Elite.

[SenorFrog]

Very, very good idea. It's about time we as a society nurture, accept, praise and guide the natural curiosity and intelligence these kids have instead of abandoning them to learn on their own in the kinds of 'Lord of the Flies' environments that exists in some areas of the internet.

[passionate_boy]

ohh ,,

when INDIA thinks about internet security ...

:x think about it ... otherwise we have to move other country

[woganmay]

10'000 overworked, underpaid government hackers. Sounds like the buildup to a B-rated thriller novel.

That aside, fantastic initiative. Give a bunch of reckless teenagers the keys to your kingdom. Lol.

[ddlitsey]

Note to the US govt., you already have the talent. They are unemployed admins, programmers and tech people who have had their pay undercut or have been displaced by H-1B visa slave labor. Any college kid intelligent enough to get through a degree is smart enough to avoid getting his/her job sold out to the lowest bidder.

[pentest]

Wrong, very few admins, programmers and tech people have the background and skills to do what they are looking for. They would not be able to move into security jobs without a lot of retraining. You can't work as a .NET API monkey and turn around and think you are qualified for these jobs. A good chunk of the people who work in admin jobs give a blank stare when they are listening to someone talk in depth about security. They get lost once you get past the simple firewall and ID rules that any hacker worth his/her salt can easily bypass.

In my experience, many of those that "lost their job" to a H1B person or outsourced wasn't earning their pay anyway.

[SenorFrog]

How are H1 visas part of this conversation? Doesn't the necessity of a security clearance mean the security worker have to be at least a naturalized citizen? This should be a boon for both the youth that these contests are targeting and the admins, programmers and tech people who want the retraining and have the initiative to jump on this cyber-security bandwagon.

[ann11912]

I agree. I don't get this so-called initiative when there are many tech workers out of work now. What about a companion program to retrain those who are part of the 11% unemployment rate right now.

[pentest]

The DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge and vulnerability discovery and exploitation competition cover areas that your typical admin and API monkey don't understand, and frankly most never could.

These are great areas that not only require deep technical knowledge but a certain type of curiosity that most people in IT or even with CS degrees do not possess. It is for people unafraid of disassembling code(an alarming number of CS people that I know are literally afraid of this!) and digging through the various memory levels.

[TheTechKid]

excellent comment pentest.