US Not Training Enough Cybersecurity Experts

graychase writes "Homeland Security's cybersecurity director, Richard Marshall, warns that universities aren't turning out enough cybersecurity experts and urges greater scholarship funding. 'Look at all the great football and basketball programs. They're all on scholarships. They're not playing for fun — they're playing for money.'"

Universities aren't taking it seriously either

[Admodieus]

At my current university, there are two undergraduate networking courses and one undergraduate security course. There's one network course in the graduate curriculum, but that's meant as a recap of the two undergrad ones if you didn't get your undergrad here. I would love to load up on network and security classes, but there's simply none being offered.

Cyber Corps

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gov has had this program going for over 10 years:
"The Federal Cyber Corps Program
The Cyber Corps Program is open to students currently completing their junior year of undergraduate school or first-year of graduate school. In addition to a stipend of approximately $1,000 per month, the Program pays for each student's tuition for two years, room and board, and travel to conferences.

After one year of training, students complete a summer internship in a federal agency, learning first-hand about computer security issues and putting into practice what they've learned in class. By the end of the second year students earn an undergraduate or graduate degree in computer science in addition to multiple federal-level computer security certificates as endorsed by the Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS)."

http://www.justice.gov/jmd/ocio/cybercorps.htm

Re:They're not seeing a primary source.

[girlintraining]

More bullshit. The military doesn't care if you have bad-credit, even has a system for helping you manage debt. They will accept people with asthma provided they can still handle the physical training, and short-sighted only gets your disqualified if you are almost blind. Plenty of military personnel wear glasses and the military will often pay for corrective surgery if you want it.

Enlistment standards [about.com].

Bad credit: "Any recruit who's monthly consumer debts (not counting debts which can be deferred, such as student loans) exceeds 40 percent of his/her anticipated military pay is ineligible for enlistment."

Asthma: Disqualifying [about.com].

Short-sighted: Having eye surgery can disqualify you, actually [about.com]. Also, being short-sighted can disqualify you, if your vision can't be corrected to within 20/40 [about.com]. Even if vision can be corrected, a wide variety of common eye problems can disqualify you, including night-blindness.

Someday you will learn that you can't take your limited experiences of the world and turn them into overly broad statements of fact about entire processes and organizations.

Hugs and kisses.

I'm pretty sure...

[Blue6]

Most of these stories are puff pieces done for or due to the FUD big consulting companies like CSC, Lockheed, Northup put out to the Bureaucrats in order to keep billing rates high. I have over 10 years of networking experience and a MS in Info Sec from a DHS sponsored school. I have applied multiple times to various positions and have never received a response back.

Re:They're not seeing a primary source.

[Anonymous Coward]

DHS is one of the worst organizations at hiring out of College. Everyone is hyping the college programs, but they won't hire out of them due to a lack of experience. I'm already technically a 1550 but still don't have the experience to transition to an organization like DHS to do the cyber jobs.