Talent Management

The voluntary Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE Framework) was developed through 

a collaborative process by industry, academia, and government stakeholders. It establishes a 

taxonomy and common lexicon that describes cybersecurity work and is intended for use in both 

the public and private sectors. NIST does not validate or endorse any individual organization or its 

approach to using the NICE Framework. 

NICE FRAMEWORK SUCCESS STORY 

California Cyber Innovation Challenge, 

Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute

DRIVERS 

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE 

Cal Poly’s California Cybersecurity Institute (CCI) 

teaches Californians to protect California. Cal 

Poly’s CCI is located on Camp San Luis Obispo, 

home of the California Army National Guard. 

The CCI consists of three buildings (over 100,000 

square feet) including a forensics lab, operations, 

training facility, and cyber range suitable for 

hosting large-scale, immersive training events. 

Through a combination of training courses, 

grants, special events, donations, and research 

efforts, the CCI offers an attractive environment 

for students from both technical as well as liberal 

arts majors to “Learn by Doing.” The CCI 

provides training to multiple government and 

quasi-government entities such as the Bay Area 

Urban Area Security Initiatives, Northern 

California Regional Intelligence Center, State of 

California Commission on Peace Officer 

Standards and Training, and private 

organizations through California’s Education 

Training Panel.

The California Cyber Innovation Challenge 

(CCIC) is the cybersecurity championship for the 

State of California. The CCIC focuses on 

providing California middle and high school 

students an engaging introduction into 

cybersecurity. The 2020 competition was 

themed around the convergence of space and 

cybersecurity and featured a virtual-immersive 

environment on Cal Poly’s digital range. 

Students responded to a fictional storyline of a 

satellite that was hacked and falls to Earth. 

Participants engaged in a 3D immersive 

environment featuring multiple space-themed 

set designs to solve the cybersecurity mystery of 

how the satellite was hacked (see Figure 1 

to watch the live immersion environment).

Figure 1: The 2020 CCIC virtual environment: 

https://youtu.be/NGRVrURPeJU

• Need for more hands-on learning

opportunities for students.

• Desire to align student training with

employer expectations.

• Enable students from multiple disciplines

to participate in building cybersecurity

content.

• Raise awareness of the variety of

cybersecurity careers.

• Goal to be a national leader in providing

cybersecurity challenges.

PROCESS

CCI staff, students, and faculty adopted the 

NICE Framework, which provided a guide for 

our team to identify cybersecurity roles and 

skills, for the challenge. 
NICE FRAMEWORK SUCCESS STORY

California Cyber Innovation Challenge, Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute

NICE Framework Website: nist.gov/nice/framework 

Contact Us: niceframework@nist.gov 

February 2021 

Contact:

 Martin Minnich, CCI Program Manager

 mminnich@calpoly.edu

Website:

 www.cci.calpoly.edu

Figure 2: Where students have participated in the past

CONTACT INFORMATION & RESOURCES 

–Henry Danielson, Program Manager. Cal

Poly California Cyber Innovation Challenge

“We want to recognize the importance of each 

student’s cybersecurity career pathways, and their 

knowledge of the NICE Framework is paramount 

to their success. The CCIC Cal Poly student team 

who created the CCIC challenges understands the 

magnitude of including ‘this blueprint to 

categorize, organize and describe cybersecurity 

work’. We are thrilled that NICE has supported 

our efforts in helping the next generation of 

cybersecurity professionals excel in this indemand career!”

By leveraging the NICE Framework to conduct 

this competition, students learn about:

• The Foundations of Cybersecurity

• Why Cybersecurity is Important

• Future Careers in Cybersecurity

The first step for our team was to identify the 

critical cybersecurity roles relevant to our 

competition. Next, we built the challenge as well 

as team training exercises for the event around 

the NICE Framework. For example, specific 

sections of the event are mapped to NICE 

Framework Task, Knowledge, and Skill 

statements.

Our challenge was to adapt the NICE framework 

for middle and high school students new to 

cybersecurity. We introduced a blended 

approach to expose students to different career 

fields and skillsets required in the cybersecurity 

marketplace.

TIE-IN WITH THE NICE FRAMEWORK

The NICE Framework helped us meet our 

objectives by providing a consistent reference 

language. Further, the mapping provided a 

listing of outcomes that students were able to 

use to describe their competence in 

cybersecurity. 

BENEFITS & IMPACT 

The 2020 CCIC was particularly unique to our 

team. Upon graduating high school, one of 

our past high school competitors began an 

internship at CCI and has had an active role in 

designing the 2020 competition. His 

perspective as a past competitor has been 

invaluable to our team. 

Our goal is to expose more students from 

underrepresented communities to a career in 

cybersecurity and to the NICE Framework by 

participating in the CCIC. We are tracking the 

success of many of our student participants 

and are amazed at how this challenge has 

catapulted many students to explore 

cybersecurity has a future career.