Labor Trends & Industry Need
Central Ohio is quickly becoming one of the top tech cities in the country; critical gaps are opening between industry and those tasked with protecting it. Closing the divide and being the link to connect cybersecurity professionals to essential careers is more important than ever. Columbus also being the fastest growing city in our nation, has a critical need for a highly-trained and knowledgeable workforce; leading to our efforts to design a cutting-edge two-year degree to meet this need. Columbus State has partnered with industry to better understand the challenges and talent needs facing our community.
Industry Trends & Job Growth
There is an ever present need for the digital world to have professionals protect our country against cyber threats. More specific to our geographical area, the cybersecurity needs are expansive and growing in the Central Ohio Region. Highly publicized attacks occur daily in in large corporations, governments, financial organizations, and in private/personal settings. There is a large demand for both trained professionals to protect both government and private entities storing sensitive data at risk.
- The market is expected to grow from $75 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020, Forbes Magazine.
- More than 209,000 cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, Forbes Magazine.
- Cybersecurity workers can command an average salary premium of nearly $6,500 per year, or 9% more than other IT workers, Job Market Intelligence.
- Postings are up 74% over the past five years, according to a 2015 analysis of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Job openings for Cybersecurity professionals will remain strong and offer an attractive wage. A field in cybersecurity means upward mobility. The hands-on training and skillset you will receive through our 2 year Cyber program can land you a job with a median earnings of $88,890 per year as an information security analyst, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The program is designed for students to continue their education beyond an associate’s degree and have upward mobility within the cyber field to address the extensive job growth and talent gap of cybersecurity professionals in this country.
Career Opportunities
You can find rewarding careers in securing and protecting information in:
- Business and IT industry
- Government and Intelligence
- Protective Services and Criminology
- Others
Industry Driven Occupation Job Skills Analysis
Columbus State ATE projects have created, piloted, and launched an effective new model for an “accelerated DACUM” known as a Job Skills Analysis with Compression Planning. This model was piloted in the ATE project entitled Building an Academic Pathway for Industrial Engineering Operations Technicians (1400452). It was then successfully replicated for the ATE project Ohio Region Cybersecurity Technician Training Pipeline (1501194).
A trained facilitator led a small group of industry representatives who generated, categorized, and rank ordered the roles, responsibilities, and major tasks of cybersecurity technicians. The group further identified the general skills, soft skills, and specialized equipment used by these technicians. The Compression Planning method proved to be a highly-effective and efficient process in extracting necessary job skills data and information from key industry partners in hours rather than days. Faculty used this information to craft a job description of a cybersecurity technician which became the basis for curriculum development. Through the use of Compression Planning, the session can take less than 25% of the time required for a full DACUM—which requires industry representatives to participate for two full days. Compression Planning provides efficiency and flexibility for the team. The resulting process typically can be accomplished in half of a day.
The Compression Planning session was attended by the following industry experts:
- Joe Vandermark – Ernst & Young
- Tom Van Winkle – Alliance Data
- Greg Franz – Nationwide
- Brad Ashbrook – Columbus Collaboratory
- Michelle Reese – Columbus Collaboratory
- Troy Vennon – Columbus Collaboratory
- Lisa Kennedy – Columbus Collaboratory
- Jordan Verst – Columbus Collaboratory
- Mike McCann – Rev1Ventures
- Marshall Dyson – Infraguard
- Bence Toth – Cardinal Health
- Joe Gottron – Cardinal Health
- Bill Sempf – Consultant
The results of this job skills analysis are summarized in the following document: (Job Skills Analysis)
Mapping Compression Planning To Government NICE Framework
One major accomplishment and goal of the 2015-2016 academic year, was to hone in on
the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NCWF) through review and research to further
understand the blueprint for program success. The next step was to tie these findings
to the job skills analysis and industry input through compression planning, ultimately
linking the two together and having the opportunity to further educate industry with
a 360 degree view on the competencies and essential needs of cybersecurity professionals.
Subsequently, key communication needs have been identified for ongoing support of
this work by the initiation of creating communication portals, mentors, clearinghouse,
websites and broadening consulting services.
What is NICE?
The NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NCWF) is a national resource that categorizes and describes cybersecurity work. It provides employers, employees, educators, students, and training providers with a common language to define cybersecurity work as well as a common set of tasks and skills required to perform cybersecurity work. Through the process of identifying the cybersecurity workforce and using a standard set of terms we can work together to educate, recruit, train, develop, and retain a highly-qualified workforce.
As such, in 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security led development of an updated the NCWF with input from the private sector, academia, and government. http://csrc.nist.gov/nice/framework/
In order to verify the results of Compression Planning aligned with the government framework laid out and gain additional insights, a formal mapping was completed by former Principal Investigator, Jeremy Porter and disseminated to project partners.
A full-report of framework and compression planning findings can be found in the following document: Mapped Compression Planning.