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The Changing Nature of Cybersecurity: It s All About Teams

By Tom Gilheany, Product Manager, Learning@Cisco

Cybersecurity teams today face multiple and rapidly evolving threats. Hyper-connectivity, BYOD
and the IoT have created a vast and complex attack surface. Bad actors and professional
cybercriminals are taking full advantage of vulnerabilities and back doors, leading to an ever-
escalating arms race between attackers and defenders. The need for a strong, comprehensive
security strategy, backed by well-organized teams has never been greater.

Changing the cybersecurity workforce framework

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) introduced Directive 8570 as an information
security workforce organization model in an effort to keep up with changing information security
needs. It outlined 14 specific job roles under four categories. In 2014, the US Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) began working with government, academia, and the private sector,
developing the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NCWF).

This more thorough cybersecurity workforce framework divides information security into seven
activity categories and 31 specialty areas, with the goal of aligning all U.S. federal information
security jobs with this new framework. This current framework will significantly impact IT
professionals looking for cybersecurity jobs and on organizations creating security teams. Using
a standard team framework and teams built in similar structures will allow departments to work
more together smoothly.

In November 2016, the US Federal Government published the latest version of the NICE
Cybersecurity Workforce Framework as NIST DRAFT Special Publication 800-181, with the
goal of gathering public commentary until January 6, 2017. This latest version of the NCWF
includes 52 Work Roles.

The critical need for teams

As we can see in the history of these frameworks, the complex job of securing our information
and systems is being divided among a growing number of job titles, functions, and specialties.

Much of the growth in cybersecurity jobs under the new U.S. NCWF comes from these new
roles and responsibilities. One of the big takeaways from this model is the need for teams.
Cybersecurity is much too big a task now for just one lone defender or even a tiny band of
professionals. It’s hardly surprising, then, that cybersecurity jobs are growing three times faster
right now than IT jobs in general and 12 times faster than the overall job market. In a 10-year
period, cybersecurity jobs grew 74 percent.

44 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine December 2016 Edition
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