November 29, 2016 – Laurin Buchanan, Principal Investigator for cybersecurity education research at Secure Decisions, was recently interviewed about her experience in the cybersecurity domain, specifically as a cyber practitioner who hired and managed people within the industry.

The National Institute for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Working Group Competitions Subgroup has released a whitepaper discussing the knowledge and training gap between the workforce that is needed and the one that is available. Twenty-eight industry leaders were interviewed for the whitepaper, including Laurin Buchanan. She offered commentary on cybersecurity competitions as someone who understands the challenges inherent in finding qualified people to fill cybersecurity positions, based on her prior cyber practitioner experience. The NICE whitepaper also discussed the future impact on cyber education and training from new technologies, such as Comic-BEE, a platform for cyber security education and competitions, based on research sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, Cyber Security Division (DHS S&T/CSD) via contract numbers HSHQDC-14-C-B0019 and HHSP233201600057C.

The NICE Working Group whitepaper, Cybersecurity Games: Building Tomorrow’s Workforce, is now available for free.

Secure Decisions was created as a division of Applied Visions, Inc., with the intent to develop products related to national security, including network defense, infrastructure protection, cyber security, intelligence analysis, and data visualization. Secure Decisions develops tools for decision-makers to appropriately analyze large amounts of complex data, and to provide cutting-edge security measures to protect their proprietary information. Many of their products were developed under contract from federal and state governments or governmental agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and DARPA.