Cybersecurity Education and Evaluation

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 

Comic-BEE, 

Secure Decisions

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE 

Secure Decisions was created as a division of 

Applied Visions, Inc. to conduct research and 

development and develop innovative 

technologies in cybersecurity, including 

application security, cybersecurity education, 

network defense, and infrastructure protection. 

Secure Decisions develops cutting-edge 

technologies focused on improving the human 

decision-making in cybersecurity. A small 

business based in Northport, NY, our 

cybersecurity education research projects have 

been funded by customers such as the U.S. Air 

Force Research Laboratory, U.S. Department of 

Homeland Security, and National Science 

Foundation.

DRIVERS 

• Secure Decisions received a grant from

Department of Homeland Security, Science

& Technology Directorate, Cyber Security

Division to create novel cybersecurity

education technology. Our idea was to use

graphic storytelling: creating branching web

comics aligned with instructional goals:

readers of the comic are asked to make

choices for a character; these choices lead

to different scenes that illustrate the

consequences (good or bad) of that choice.

• To enable this approach, Secure Decisions

created Comic-BEE (https://www.comicbee.com), a web application that scaffolds

educators, subject matter experts, and

authors though four workflows to create an

educational, branching web comic. The

workflows include: creating a lesson plan;

creating a branching script aligned with the

 lesson plan; visually laying out a

 storyboard of that script scene by scene;

 and, finally, converting the storyboards

 to full color comic panels and publishing

 the comics. 

• Customers wanted to also use branching

web comics to evaluate cybersecurity

knowledge of the workforce. Comics

need only an HTML5-compliant browser

—no expensive labs, environments, or

software for clients to download.

Figure 1: Comic-BEE approach

PROCESS

Comic-BEE already used a hierarchical 

approach to scaffold authors through the 

process of creating a lesson plan, the first 

part of creating an educational, branching 

web comic. Authors define at least one highlevel concept, then drill down to more 

granular Knowledge, Skills and Abilities 

(KSAs) related to that concept. Lastly, for 

each KSA, authors identify low-level, concrete 

learning objectives, which are statements 
NICE FRAMEWORK SUCCESS STORY

Comic Bee, Secure Decisions

NICE Framework Website: nist.gov/nice/framework 

Contact Us: niceframework@nist.gov 

February 2021 

Contact:

 Laurin Buchanan, Principal Investigator for

 Cybersecurity Education Research

 laurin.buchanan@securedecisions.com

Website

 https://securedecisions.com

– Laurin Buchanan, Principal

Investigator, Secure Decisions

“Integrating the NICE Framework into the 

lesson planning capabilities of Comic-BEE 

allows curriculum designers to rapidly create 

interactive curriculum or assessments aligned 

with industry needs.” 

describing specific things a learner needs to be 

able to do.

The NICE Framework’s hierarchical structure of 

Categories, Specialty Areas, Work Roles, and 

Tasks/KSAs aligned well with this existing 

approach. Using a spreadsheet version of the 

NICE Framework, the Comic-BEE development 

team integrated the framework into Comic-BEE’s 

lesson plan database. An option was added to 

the Comic-BEE lesson plan workflow, allowing 

authors to choose to use the NICE Framework or 

create their own lesson plan. Now, when an 

author chooses the NICE Framework for their 

lesson plan, they just select a Category from a list 

of drop-down options. A similar list of available 

Specialty Areas is auto-populated based on the 

selected Category for the author to select from. 

This process repeats through Work Roles and 

Tasks and KSAs (KSAT). Authors can then add 

their own learning objectives for each KSAT. 

Authors can easily use multiple Work Roles and 

different Categories within the same comic. 

Figure 2: The NICE Framework integrated into the Comic-BEE 

workflow

TIE-IN WITH THE NICE FRAMEWORK

The NICE Framework appears as an option on 

the very first page in the process of creating a 

comic. This has introduced the existence of the 

NICE Framework to many people previously 

unaware of of it: hundreds of our users have

been computer science students creating 

comics about cyber ethics as a college course 

assignment. One client developed a comic 

using the NICE Framework to introduce 

corporate executive leadership to 

cybersecurity risk management and the NICE 

Framework. We were able to demonstrate 

competitions or challenges aligned with 

specific Work Roles by creating scored comics 

using the NICE Framework as the core of the 

lesson plan—without needing virtual 

environments or software downloads.

BENEFITS & IMPACT 

The customizable, hierarchical view of the 

NICE Framework in Comic-BEE can provide a 

complete view of a Work Role, enabling a 

comic to be not just aligned with the NICE 

Framework but customized for the unique 

combination of Work Roles, KSAs and Tasks 

relevant for a specific job at an organization. 

Integrating the NICE Framework allowed 

Comic-BEE to support the rapid creation of 

interactive curriculum aligned with industry 

needs by enabling curriculum designers to 

focus on specific learning objectives 

supporting KSAs and Tasks, particularly those 

not addressed through current training and 

certifications. 

CONTACT INFORMATION & RESOURCES