National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework

Executive Summary

The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) has developed the National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (“the Framework”) to provide a common understanding of and lexicon for cybersecurity work. Defining the cybersecurity population consistently, using standardized terms is an essential step in ensuring that our country is able to educate, recruit, train, develop, and retain a highly-qualified workforce.

Framework Overview

In designing the Framework, “Categories” and “Specialty Areas” were used as an organizing construct to group similar types of work. The categories, serving as an overarching structure for the Framework, group related specialty areas together. Within each specialty area, typical tasks and knowledges, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are provided. In essence, specialty areas in a given category are typically more similar to one another than to specialty areas in other categories.

The intention of the Framework is to describe cybersecurity work regardless of organizational structures, job titles, or other potentially idiosyncratic conventions. For example, under this structure an individual may perform tasks in more than one specialty area, or all of an individual’s work may fall within a single specialty area. Similarly, large agencies may have many individuals devoted to a single specialty area while smaller agencies may need individuals to cross multiple specialty areas. Within any given organization, the way these groupings are organized into positions, career fields, or work roles depends on a number of factors including organizational characteristics (e.g., geographic location), constraints (e.g., limited personnel), and mission. Thus, due to the variety of jobs, occupations, cultures, structures within any given agency or organization, there may not always be a “one-to-one” crosswalk of jobs or career fields to individual specialty areas.



Supporting Materials


NICE Cube - Workforce Framework

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