School districts have various challenges. Since we are a K-8 district we know the challenges districts and schools may face, especially when implementing something new.

One of the largest challenges is time. School days are built on minutes, not hours. Every minute is accounted for. Implementing even one module of cybersecurity curriculum may be a challenge in the K-8/12 level. This model would need to be inserted into another subject, taking away from another initiative. One we have addressed this is either in technology classes, or classes that aren’t tested by state mandates, such as social studies. Incorporating the new curriculum into existing classes would be critical to have positive outcomes. The social studies teacher can go through a simple module before providing the curriculum or task to students in their class.

To encourage cybersecurity career exploration, we would have engaged industry professionals such as certified ethical hackers speak to the students to get them engaged and excited about a career in cybersecurity. Students resonate with the word “hacker” as it immediately generates excitement and a spark of interest. The variety of speakers would allow students to see all areas of cybersecurity which can include offense, defense, penetration testing, ethical hacking, protection, data loss prevention, etc. Just like any career, there are many avenues’ students can take when choosing their path. Our team currently has a large amount of connections with industry professionals who would be able to network with K-12 schools to build this interest, share their experiences, and entice students to think about a career in cybersecurity which would help the shortage of professionals in the near future.

Additionally, to promote student engagement, we would align soft skills commonly found in sports/esports with cybersecurity curriculum, labs, and competitions. While cybersecurity is a highly technical field, it is important to develop and improve soft skills as this is a crucial mechanism the future workforce can use to their advantage. For example, in the world of sports/esports, teamwork is imperative to a successful season, similar to that of a technology department, security operations center, or other cybersecurity position. Critical thinking and decision making are skills that would be a focal point with labs and competitions as the students work through them. Implementing appropriate firewall rules, incident response, or network configurations all utilize the ability to think critically and make a strong, confident decision. Communication is another skill students need daily inside and outside of the classroom. We would facilitate student communication with group work within the curriculum as well as competitions where communication would be a key to team success. While we believe that there are obvious hard skill shortfalls within the cybersecurity industry, we recognize that soft skills cannot be neglected as they only uphold, support, and compliment the hard skills in addition to benefitting the students outside of their future professional career.

To enhance exPANDAbilities and address the national shortfalls of cybersecurity professionals we would connect with industry partners that employ cybersecurity professionals. We would speak with human resources and hiring managers to determine why they are having issues hiring the right people, skills, and abilities. After making this connection, we can tailor our initiatives to aid in filling these gaps. The difference between this program and other government funded initiatives is we are reaching the students at a younger age. This would result in the foundational knowledge of cybersecurity to be stronger and be the catalyst of excitement and passion for cybersecurity and cybersecurity roles. In order to have better engagement with students, we would engage other district’s technology departments.