Gov’t Launching First Employee Reskilling Academy for Cybersecurity

The Office of Management and Budget is launching the government’s first cyber reskilling academy to train employees who aren’t in the information technology field to become cyber defense analysts, Government Matters reported Sunday.

Jason Gray, chief information officer at the Department of Education, said the Federal Cybersecurity Reskilling Academy will provide participants with the latest cyber practices and problem-solving skills to protect their networks. The department began registration for the program in late November and plans to name 25 participants from across the government by end of January. Gray said over 700 people have applied for the pilot cyber training program.

Alan Paller, founder and director of research at the SANS Institute, said FCRA would also teach participants the “language” to understand IT processes. 

“You can’t train someone to be a cyber person if they don’t have the language,” Paller said. “It would be like training a surgeon who doesn’t know anatomy. There’s networking, the internals of the computers, Linux, Python; if you don’t know how to do that, all you can do is talk about security.”