~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 1

NIST Request For Information:

Growing and Sustaining the Nation’s Cybersecurity

Workforce

Aug 2, 2017

Submitted by

LifeJourney, LLC

9256 Bendix Rd, Columbia, Maryland 21045

Rick Geritz, Founder and CEO
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Table of Contents

Forward

1)ExecutiveOverview

2)Background and Supporting Information

The Cyber Hierarchy of Needs

The Cyber Education Operating System

Day of Cyber ... The primary application on the Cyber Education Operating System

Cyber Resume

The Student Dashboard

It’s All About Empowering Teachers in Cyber

The CyberIQ

Cyber Connects to Existing Curricula

Cyber University Program

Cyber Teacher Professional Development Certificate Program

3)Summary

About LifeJourney

APPENDIX A: Q & A

APPENDIX B: Supporting Graphics
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Forward

LifeJourney, an online interactive learning experience focused on cyber education, is pleased to provide our

feedback to the NIST Request For Information - Strengthening the the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and

Critical Infrastructure: Workforce Development. Creating a robust cyber workforce in the US to meet the security

needs of today and tomorrow is critical to our national and economic security. We recognize the importance of a

trained cyber workforce and have developed the resources, tools, methodologies and platform to support this

effort. We believe it is critical to have a holistic approach to the cyber workforce challenge. This means starting

early in the education system to increase awareness of cyber careers, to inspire students to follow cyber careers

and grow their cyber skill levels, and ensure that teachers are prepared to teach cyber in the classroom. Our

comments herein reflect our thinking on how to close the current cyber workforce gap and to maintain our

nation’s cyber technology and innovation leadership well into the future.

1) Executive Overview

Experts agree that our world today is facing a critical and tragic shortfall in the pipeline of adequately prepared

graduates to meet the growing cyber threats in industry. By 2020 there will be more than 1.5 million open

cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. alone.

Our current educational strategies embrace structured curricula of computerscience, engineering and

mathematics in which cyber security skill set acquisition is not at the forefront of high school curricula. The world

of cyber presents problems that students will never be confronted with in the classroom. There is no textbook or

syllabus that teaches students about cyber skills. This is not to say that classical approaches are wrong, but rather

that today’s world has changed. Cybersecurity itself needs to be in our schools’ curricula just as much as is

science, technology, engineering and science. Sadly, it is not.

LifeJourney doesthe following:

1) When an cybersecurity industry expert mentor is reverse engineered, the core career information is

extracted and used to create a Skills Table that represents the DNA of that career;

2) The system then maps that Skills Table against what is taught in high schools and universities to identify a

Skills Gap that can be addressed and minimized with additional tools (applications) in the OS.

3) The API framework connects to best of breed cyber competitions, certifications and non traditional

learning tools to provide a complete experience.

The Skills Table is the brain embodied within the Day of Cyber platform. Once instantiated, the Skills Table

literally brings the platform to life in the classroom. Whenever a new cyber mentor is added to the LifeJourney

system, the Skills Table gets updated and the overall model grows to address the rapidly evolving needs of the

cyber education community in an ever-widening manner.

The LifeJourney model is a highly-scalable cyber security career platform that converts

the nation’s cyber security leaders into a cyber skills pathway and development. Mentor

skills continually update and grow a master Cyber Skills Table, which then conveys a

multi-year career journey to guide the user. The platform connects teachers and parents

relative to that student’s career aspirations, skills and abilities, and education roadmap.

The platform then connects to best of breed competitions, certifications and curricula

into an integrated always-updating system.
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By having industry’s leading cybersecurity companies, and their hiring groups, define the cyberskills they need, a

real-time acceleration of workforce capabilities is experienced. Skills can be developed now in a hands-on and

self-taught way facilitated by industry expert mentors leveraged in a massively-scalable manner, instead of just

following the classical path of a multi-year formal education. New and dynamically created/updated tools such a

the CyberIQ Challenges paves the way for universities and employers to identify skills gaps in direct, tangible ways

... and then act on it!

We must construct cyber education tools and methodologies that allow students to more quickly find their

passions and develop their cyber skills, irrespective of age and traditional education constructs. We have

demonstrated the ability to do this very thing with new approaches utilizing hands-on experiential learning tools,

teacher-empowered cyber education methodologies, and at-scale mentor-based guidance in the cyber education

space.

We propose that the NSA Day of Cyber, along with several other powerfully-related modules, is a way to provide

widespread and easily-adopted cybersecurity awareness, motivation, inspiration and training forstudents of all

types, teachers at all levels, and education institutions touching the more than 40 million users who have the

potential of becoming our country’s Next Cyber Generation. By providing such a leveragable set of interrelated

components within a cyber education framework, or “cyber education operating system” as we will show, our

nation will be able to incorporate additional cyber education modules from multiple vendors as they become

available.

In this Request For Information ...

● We show how such a proven Cyber Education OS can accelerate the growth and maturity of our nation’s

cyber education system at scale, while providing our educators and institutions the flexibility to

implement these tools in myriad ways within America’s classrooms.

● We illustrate how the LifeJourney Cyber Education OS has the proven capability of quickly evolving and

assessing student cyberskills development using real-life cyberscenarios, guided interactively by a virtual

mentors based on actual expert employees in the cybersecurity industry. These LifeJourney Mentors are

leveraged virtually to tens of millions of users — students and teachers alike — to inspire, inform and

instruct on cyber tools and solution methodologies.

● We demonstrate how the NSA Day of Cyber, along with its attendant suite of OS components, is able to

address the cyber education needs of students, educator competencies and administrators from every

societal dimension, and simultaneously evolve with the industry as new players, new techniques and new

technologies arise in the cybersecurity fabric of our daily lives.

These efforts can great help our country bootstrap and accelerate the entry of its young graduates to the

cybersecurity workforce and lift our capabilities ranking on the world stage. These efforts can help fill the

projected 1.5 million open cyber jobs that are so direly needed yet are currently unfillable. These efforts

constitute today’s “space race”. And when successful, these efforts will result in us creating America’s Next Cyber

Generation.

The LifeJourney Team

LifeJourney technology is scalable mentorship.
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 5

2) Background and Supporting Information

The NSA Day of Cyber is an interactive, self-guided, and fully-automated cloud-based cyberscience awareness

program that enables students to test-drive cyber careers and live a day in the life of seven leading NSA cyber

professionals. More than 5 million students across the U.S. currently registered in the NSA Day of Cyber,

regardless of means, are continuing to have the opportunity to participate in the NSA Day of Cyber for free.

Since August 2015, the National Security Agency (NSA) has partnered with LifeJourney on a national initiative

called the NSA Day of Cyber, designed to raise the awareness and the “national IQ” for STEM and CyberSecurity

education paths. NSA is sponsoring the program to introduce and inspire millions of students in middle school,

high school, college and university to pursue STEM and Cyber careers and build the skills that will open up their

future and connect them to this in-demand digital workforce.

Olexia continues, “Corporate espionage, data leakage and loss, privacy and related issues impact many

businesses. This has created a growing need for trained and certified cybersecurity workers. We are hopeful that

the ‘Day of Cyber’ program will ignite the interest of students across the U.S. to pursue careers in cybersecurity.”

The Cyber Hierarchy of Needs

In 1943 Maslow first presented a motivational theory comprised of a five-tier model of human needs, often

depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. He stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and

that some needs take precedence over others. For example, our most basic need is for physical survival, and this

will be the first thing that motivates our behaviour. Once that need is fulfilled, the next level up is what motivates

us.

Curiously, a similar type of hierarchical “needs structure” can be considered as being present within today’s

nascent system of providing cyber education. As illustrated below in Figure 1, one first becomes exposed to, and

driven by society’s pervasive use of cyber. One then climbs the pyramid toward more mature uses of cyber, and

ultimately in some cases, seeking out training, expertise and specialization on the path toward career fulfillment.

FIGURE 1: The Cyber Hierarchy of Needs

The Lifejourney cyber education components — the NSA Day of Cyber, CyberIQ, Cyber University, and Cyber

Teacher — stack up quite seamlessly against this Cyber Hierarchy of Needs model. Students of any age are able to

gain the initial cyber awareness, exposure and cyber lingua, and then evolve up through that Needs pyramid,

culminating in their cultivation of expertise and specialization to be part of the Next Cyber Generation.

“Cybersecurity is an issue that touches virtually every segment of the

public and private sector,”

D. Christopher Olexia, Chief, External Recruiting at NSA.
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Of course, cyber solutions from other vendors should also plug into this needs hierarchy and provide additional

dimensions of refinement and curation of the cyber skills needed in today’s cyber society. In fact, collaboration is

necessary, as many varying needs can be met with multi-vendor participation. Thus it is essential that other

solutions work seamlessly with the LifeJourney platforms, for this is a powerful way that such a cyber education

“platform” is able to keep pace with a rapidly evolving cyber industry. Examples of such other plug-ins are the

NIST Cyber Workforce Framework, cyber programs from leading universities and CAEs, and active training

components from SANS, Cisco, CompTIA and CSTA, just to name a few.

The point, however, is that for us to succeed in collectively creating a lasting Next Cyber Generation, our nation

must cultivate an interactive and interchangeable collection of hands-on training and evaluation modules as the

basis of an effective and long-lasting cyber education solution.

The Cyber Education Operating System

LifeJourney is a platform containing drivers, services, scheduling and an interoperable application framework

required by nearly any cyber education software has been constructed — and has been operational for over two

years with millions of student and teacher users.

Based on the proven and extensible LifeJourney Day of

Cyber platform, this Cyber Education OS has played an

important role of “cyber awareness, inspiration and

instruction” for tens of thousand middle schools, high

schools, colleges and universities throughout the United

States, and in a growing number of other countries.

The architecture of the Day of Cyber platform is

organized with common functions required by cyber

education apps being available and coordinated by a

supporting structure of drivers. In this way the

specialized cyber education services such as registration,

reporting, navigation, user profile, dashboards, flow

control, and media handling are provided for all

applications running in the OS. Similarly, as in standard

operating systems, common computerservices of cloud

network support, user interface, secure access control

and user login/logout are also provided.

The all-important cyber education applications — the

software programs that inspire, inform and instruct —

run on the Cyber Education OS and utilize those drivers

and services provided beneath. A conceptual model of the “Cyber Education Operating System” is shown below

in Figure 2 to illustrate how these, and other cyber education applications can plug in to extend the overall model

for multi-vendor / multi-institution use.

Day of Cyber ... The primary application on the Cyber Education Operating System

Cyber education is relatively new with the proliferation of computers and cloud-based technology today. It is also

relatively unique, with fast-changing technology and industry tools, which makes it difficult for established school

curricula to keep pace and remain relevant. The Day of Cyber was designed specifically to address this uniqueness

and to bring cyber relevancy into the classroom for teachers and students alike.

The NSA Day of Cyber is an online career simulation and mentorship platform that helps students find their

passion, and enables organizations to dramatically extend the reach of their community initiatives. LifeJourney

enables a single mentor to touch the lives of millions of students, inspire them about their future, and provide the
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sustaining motivation necessary to transform future generations.

LifeJourney helps students discover their passion, test-drive future

career opportunities, gain exposure to the skills they'll need to achieve

their dreams, and help them better answer the age-old question,

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Within the Day of Cyber, a student is able to “experience a day in the

life” of expert mentors from the NSA, thus giving the student a chance

to see and experience what a subject matter expert (the NSA Mentor)

routinely does, the tools normally used, and the skills notably

demonstrated while performing in the specific cybersecurity career role

being explored.

As such, the corresponding collection of LifeJourney capabilities can be depicted as residing under an overarching

umbrella called “LifeJourney Ideation”, with its primary modules being represented as supporting the platform.

These LifeJourney primary modules are unique and powerful in the industry, and have been designed to:

1) Inspire and motivate a STEM-generation

of students to achieve betterscores in

the global classroom;

2) Be scalable to be used to engage and

motivate more than 40 million students

across America;

3) Provide a platform for engaging

America’stop corporate leadership in

the educational success of our youth,

while simultaneously allowing them to

invest in and cultivate an environment to

grow tomorrow’s technology workforce;

and

4) Provide an awareness in our nation’s

youth regarding the wealth of available

STEM-technology jobs, and the pathways

to achieve internships and employment,

thus enabling them to answer the

questions “What do you want to be

when you grow up?”

Cyber Resume

One of the outputs of the LifeJourney system for users is the Cyber Resume, which reflects analytics on a

student’s career tendencies and captures performance, interest and aptitude indicators, such as mentorselection,

cyberskills roadmap and career preferences, and award, badge and certificate achievements.

The resume Identifies and tracks core hard skills, soft skills and certifications required for the favorite

mentor/career, the recommended college/university courses that can prepare students for their chosen mentor’s

career, and a roadmap of training a student will needs in order to potentially gain future internships or full-time

jobs in the chosen field.

The Cyber Resume is a dynamic and continuous representation of these dimensions and attributes as a result of

the student’s career exploration. It starts from the very first time that a student embarks on a journey, and

continues throughout the numerous follow-on combinations of industry-sponsored Field Trips. Cyber Resumes
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have been effectively used during job search activities, as it represents a real-time reflection of acquired cyber

training and skills accumulation. It becomes the student’s passport to future economic success in industry, while

simultaneously serving as an overarching guide through the maze of technologies and competing educational

pathways.

Teachers, parents and potential employers are able to

see and take action on the ever-changing montage of a

student’s evolving cyber maturity. It indicates trends in

class performance when viewed in aggregate, and

teachers can tailor subsequent instruction to

strengthen needed areas. Parents are able to see a

dimension of their child’s interests and capabilities

that they might not have previously been aware of.

Employers are able to see authoritative evidence of a

student’s performance and achievement (e.g., via

certificationsreceived).

The Student Dashboard

Students also have an activity dashboard in which they

are able to more deeply explore the mentor

backgrounds and skills, including videos, the

interactive story Q&A, resources presented by the

mentors, the cyber dictionary, and more. Ofspecial

interest to most students is the Beginner Cyber

Challenge field trip in which they answer stimulating

technology questions relating to cyber tools and skills.

Other online field trips are also available (e.g., Crypto

Challenge charactersubstitution puzzles, and various

links to the NSA internships website) that students can

work on prior to them earning their Completion

Certificate.

It’s All About Empowering Teachersin Cyber

Creating the Cyber Generation starts with teachers, the most influential element in shaping and guiding a

student’s educational path. Research shows that a single teacher can make a personal impact on 100 students,

which means helping teachers provides an exponential path to the cyber generation.

One of the most important aspects of creating a Cyber Generation is elevating the technical relevance of

teachersin the classroom.

The Day of Cyber is integrated with the student classroom experience as a co-curricular element of their

instruction. Accordingly, participating teachers also track student progress through an Instructor's Dashboard.
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FIGURE 3: Instructor Dashboard enables teachers to monitor and report on student progress

While engaged in the program, teachers have direct access to numerous instructional cyber resources and

references, such as LifeJourney lesson plans, detailed course guides and industry data designed to integrate into

their existing math, computerscience, technology, and career guidance classes.

Within their dashboard, teachers can monitor each student’s progress and generate reports on overall class

participation. They may also preview all journeys available to the students, and use any of many helpful Lesson

Plans available there.

FIGURE 4: Reporting Capabilities from the Instructor Dashboard

A specific journey called “Cyber Teacher” has been designed exclusively for teachers to enable them to better

understand how they can introduce cyber careers into their lessons. This journey, and corresponding instruction,

guides teachers relative to how to run the Day of Cyber and how to effectively incorporate the cyber material and

resources within their own syllabus. In effect, they become career counselorsto their students by providing new

cyber concepts, content and roadmaps to their future cyber careers.
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The CyberIQ

The CISO CyberIQ Challenge is a powerful set of applications running on the Cyber Education OS. They were

designed to enable high school, college, university and industry players to connect directly with the cyber

generation and help inspire them to make a highly visible corporate impact on the cyber community. The CyberIQ

Challenge provides a unique opportunity to provide real problems and simulates hand-on experience to better

prepare students for life after university.

This important component of the Cyber Education OS addresses key strategic goals:

● Identifies and reaches cyber students, teachers and adult workers on an unprecedented scale. The CISO

CyberIQ Challenge provides 24/7 virtual recruiting engines so corporate HR and recruiting departments

willsee results far exceeding the quantity and quality of conventional cyber recruiting methods.

● Participating companies are highly visible in the cyber communities ofstudents, educational institutions,

industry and governments. Using LifeJourney’s proven platform, the company’s image, inspiration and

message is projected with a fresh and relevant community presence.

The CyberIQ Challenge allows users to determine where their cyber capabilities are and continue to build them to

the point where they can plug into specific and meaningful careers in the cyber industry.

The core engine of the Cyber IQ Challenge consists of a set of 200 real-life “cyber problems” typically seen in 

every facet of society today. The challenges are designed to connect the everyday world of users to the cyber

world. Students use their innate abilities to solve these problems individually through clues and experimentation

with online tools of the cyber trade. While working through the problems, students are experiencing hard skills

through their research and discovery of solutions on their own. They encounter the tools and techniques used by

cyber professionals, and evolve their innate soft skills like grit, tenacity, communication and decision-making ... all

of which help determine their aptitude for problem solving. The Cyber IQ Challenge is a way that students may

encounter many of these real-life problems and apply creativity and ingenuity in solving them.

The CyberIQ Challenge has been demonstrated to be a measurable cyber skills development technique for

classroom and corporate HR use. The resultant rating a user achieves — the Cyber Aptitude — indicates his/her

ability to solve cyber problems on their own without having prior instruction. One’s natural soft skills of grit,

tenacity, perseverance, research and curiosity all combine with the hard skills of cyber technology to enable the

student to dig in and solve real-life cyber problems on a par with students having more exposure and experience.

FIGURE5: CyberIQ Dashboard

Cyber Connectsto Existing Curricula

Teachers are able to use cyber challenges to illustrate and amplify the course material being taught in traditional

STEM classrooms. Direct hands-on involvement ofstudents in solving real industry cyber security problems allows
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class materials to literally come to life. In essence, the CyberIQ Challenge becomes a powerful teaching tool for

educators in the classroom.

The challenges presented to students in the Cyber IQ Challenge provide fertile ground to convert what is being

taught in the classroom into the how. For example, this hand-on learning tool shows how passwords are hidden

from others, how hackers take over other people’s computers, and how data is sent from one phone to another

over a network. Again, the hard skills associated with these types of scenarios are what educators are able to

bring into the classic courses like computerscience, mathematics and technology.

Experience has shown that students really enjoy taking a self-empowered, self-driven path to their cyber skills

development. By nature, students in cyber greatly enjoy solving puzzles, working with data sets, and working on

loosely-defined problemsthat require Internet research.

CyberIQ Challenge Organization

The CyberIQ Challenge is organized as multiple sequentially-administered modules based on degree of

question/topic difficulty and the average time needed to complete. Questions within these easy, medium, hard

and extreme modules (as illustrated below) may be shuffled to best meet the intended audience and usage. Thus

specific CyberIQ Challenge modules may be constructed for educators in high school or university, or as tools for

employers to evaluate incoming or existing employees.

FIGURE 6: CyberIQ Modules

Cyber Achievement Equivalencies

The Cyber Aptitude rating that students achieve within the CyberIQ Challenge modules suggests an education

equivalency relative to students and workforce professionals who have taken a more traditional cyber education

pathway, as illustrated below in Figure 7.

FIGURE 7: Cyber Achievement Equivalency
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For example, a Cyber Aptitude of 90%-or-better may be considered equivalent (in cybersecurity terms) to having a

degree in computerscience or technology, having earned some certifications and working in a cybersecurity job for

two years. Lower levels of achievement have correspondingly lower equivalencies.

The CyberIQ Challenge provides an effective way forschool systems to introduce cyberskills into existing course

curricula. By presenting students with hands-on, project-based learning opportunities, teachers can bring current

course materials to life by relating them to real-life cybersituations in industry. Further, and most important,

teachers are better able to motivate and prepare students for the lucrative cyber job market awaiting them after

graduation.

Cyber University Program

Cybersecurity has become the most visible and pressing educational issue for our nation, impacting every aspect 

of our economy from healthcare, mobile, to everyday financial transactions. It has given birth to a rapidly growing

digital jobs market and an unprecedented opportunity for the future generation - the cyber generation. The

Forbes article which covers the more than 1 Million job openings in 2016, outlinesthe opportunity for

universities to dramatically grow theirstudent base. Our ability to inspire students to pursue the key skills

needed to drive our country’s cybersecurity future needs is of extreme importance

to our nation and to our communities.

The Cyber University Program was released as a component of the LifeJourney

Cyber Education OS in December 2016. Since then, participating universities have

been able to leverage more than 5 million students currently registered in the

LifeJourney NSA Day of Cyber to grow their enrollment into cyber related programs.

Cyber Universities are able to create a unique visibility of their cyber programs for

schools and students within their network of high schools and colleges. Their

university-branded Day of Cyber provides them a powerful new cyberstudent

recruitment engine, a strong cyberstudent retention capability, and a scalable

branding tool for universities to grow their Cyber programs and expand the base of

teachers that directly support their programs.

Reporting Tools

Specially-constructed dashboards enable Cyber Universities to measure and report

on program effectiveness, assess performance, and gauge the demographic reach

of their program.

The Cyber University Dashboard provides an astounding view of effectiveness of

their cyber reach into their education communities:

● Sponsored students by school, city, that have begun

their university—linked cybersecurity journey;

● Ranking of the cybersecurity Day of Cyber Mentors

and careers that the students select as the most

interesting and inspiring.

● Metrics that can be rolled up by schools, city,

students, gender, age and career interest.

● Teacher Analytics

● Number of teachers who completed the Cyber

Teacher certificate
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● Number of teachers who have received their certificate with the university logo

● City, State, School of each sponsored Cyber Teacher

● Number of students who have run the NSA Day of Cyber as part of the Cyber Teacher Certificate program

Cyber Course Mappings

Connecting student cyber Interests to corresponding cyber-related programs is a powerful way for Cyber

Universities to connect incoming student population, as well as the “cyberstudents” in theirsubordinate school

network, with the wealth of cyber-related program opportunities available at the university.

The custom “mapping” of student cyber interests, as collected, curated and reported on within the Day of Cyber

platform, identifies the specific courses in university programs that relate to the skills required in the journeys

explored by the students.

This Course Mapping tool, shown below in Figure 8, has proven success in enhancing university enrollment and in

use as a tool for the Cyber Teacher and guidance counselors working with students and parents.

FIGURE 8: Cyber University courses mapped to related Day of Cyber careers

(See larger image in Appendix B)

Cyber Teacher Professional Development Certificate Program

Growing and developing the ranks of teachers, professors and instructors who are capable of effectively training

the Next Cyber Generation is a hugely important imperative for increasing the ranks of cyber-ready graduates into

industry. Cyber Teacher is a turn-key, CSTA-accredited certificate program that allows teachers from every level

of the country’s education system to gain the training, resources and motivation to leverage their respective

course specialties with respect to cyber security.

In this program, teachers in middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities may independently pursue

cyber training in order to more effectively relate their course material to current, real-life cybersecurity skills,

tools and situations encountered in industry.

The Cyber Teacher program directly addresses an educator’s need to bootstrap into cyber awareness for the skills,

tool and methodologies that ourstudents will encounter upon entry to cyber industry workforce. Armed with this
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foundational understanding, teachers are better able to translate cyber industry needs into teaching instruments

within their math, science, computer, IT and career placement classroom settings.

Cyber Teacher Scholarships

Educators across America are able to participate in the Cyber Teacher program via Cyber Teacher Scholarships

that are generously sponsored by LifeJourney partners and universities participating in the Cyber University

program.

These Cyber Teacher Scholarships drive solid cyber pillars into the bedrock of the nation’s education system by

providing access to the cyber technology, knowledge, experience and tools that educators need when bringing

cyber into their classrooms.

Cyber Universities sponsor Cyber Teachers for their own institution as well as for teachers in their feeder network

of high schools and Community Colleges. These scholarships provide the universities with another powerful way

to contribute to solving the nation’s cyber skills crisis — by

fortifying their teaching community with the awareness and tools

needed to inspire and guide students to pursue tomorrow’s

emerging, challenging, in-demand and high-paying careers in

cybersecurity.

The professional development aspect of the Cyber Teacher

program involves completion of CompTIA’s Fundamentals of Cyber

online adaptive learning course to teach teachers the basics of

cyber, and three hands-on use cases in the Day of Cyber product

that instruct on the operational aspects of bringing cyber into the

classroom ... and infusing the syllabus material with cyber

relevancy from industry.

Upon completion of the PD program, teachers receive a Cyber

teacher Certificate signed by university leadership and the

Computer Science Teachers Association, with an endorsement for 8

CEU clock-hours. The educators become members of the Cyber

Teacher Association and take part in “America’s Cyber Educators”

Digital Publication and an invitation to the National Awards and

Recognition Ceremony at the CSTA Conference.

Additionally, Cyber Teacher graduates gain access to year-round cyber skills and teaching materials exclusively

provided within the LifeJourney platform. These resources and tools enable them to powerfully connect real-life

workforce situations and problems seen in the cyber industry. The Cyber Skills Lesson Guide shown below in

Figure 9, illustrates the type of quality cyber instructional material available to Cyber Teachers for use throughout

the school year.
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FIGURE 9: Cyber Skills Lesson Guide (cover page)

Enables Cyber Teachers to emphasize & leverage cyber skills and principles throughout the school year

3) Summary

Cybersecurity truly is the most visible and pressing educational issue for our nation today, impacting every aspect

of oursociety, from everyday life in the marketplace, transportation, and critical infrastructure. It has given birth

to a rapidly growing digital jobs market and an unprecedented opportunity for the future generation - the Next

Cyber Generation. Our ability to inspire students to pursue the key skills needed to fill the huge cyber workforce

shortage and drive our country’s cybersecurity future needs is of extreme importance to our nation and to our

communities.

In this document we have detailed an existing, proven, extensible and interoperable platform of complementary

“education applications” (programs) that directly address the cyber education needs of our country. These

applications are embodied in the LifeJourney Cyber Education Operating System in such a manner that each

Cyber Education Application is able to work cooperatively within an established framework of cyber and

education resources, and evolve in step with the fast-changing cybersecurity industry. The Cyber Education OS

was developed to allow vendor interoperability, such that feature modules from other education partners can

seamlessly plug in to provide additional cyber education functional dimensions.

LifeJourney technology is scalable mentorship. The technology reverse engineers the skills journey of the nation’s

top cyber leaders from government and industry and creates a master Skills Table. That table is mapped against

The objective is about providing people the skills that employers need. Achieving

that objective on a national scale to the country is the mission.
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the nation’s High Schools, Community Colleges and Universities providing a direct pathway for the user ... to

achieve his/her own dreams, and to address America’s cybersecurity workforce shortage needs.

The highly scalable platform then connects (via an API framework) to those who teach, instruct, certify or complete

the education path with students.

The importance of this approach is that LifeJourney Mentors provide an ever-evolving Skills Table mapped to the

dynamic needs of the country's cyber education system.

Wide-ranging partners and users of the Day of Cyber (and other components in the Cyber Education Operating

System) come from the cyber industry, cyber education and training organizations, and enjoy a deep participation

within our nation’s public and private education system: middles schools, high schools, 2- and 4-yr colleges and

universities. The user population of the Day of Cyber platform also includes special interest groups such as Boy

and Girl Scouts of America, Cyber Summer Camps and GenCyber Camps. Entire states (VA, DE) are endorsing and

implementing the Day of Cyber platform within their regions. Over two years of documented participation exists

from urban, metropolitan, and underserved communities. Home-schooled students, job-changing adults,

retooling veterans and students from every walk of life today are prominently present in the more than 5 million

person user base of the NSA Day of Cyber platform.

This unprecedented population of users, education institutions, and industry partners gives us the belief and

confidence that the LifeJourney Cyber Education OS is among the most powerful waysthat America has to

rebuild its cyber workforce and retake its leadership position on the world’s cybersecurity stage. As the Space

Race was in the Kennedy era, no other time in history than now has it been more important to focus on, and

invest in, America’s cyber workforce.

No other platform, industry player orsingular product has the farther-reaching tentacles into the cyber education

system than LifeJourney, and its Cyber Education OS has the best opportunity to play a central role in rebuilding

America’s cyber workforce ... the Next Cyber Generation.

About LifeJourney

LifeJourneyTM is the leader in cybersecurity and STEM online career exploration and simulation. A web-based tool

for the classroom that enables students to explore, discover and test-drive exciting careers of America's STEM

and Cybersecurity leaders, and thus become informed and inspired to follow the related STEM pathways to

achieve those futures. The LifeJourney experience enables teachers to directly connect what they are teaching in

the classroom to what students learn through the tools and technologies of organizations defining the workforce

needs of tomorrow. www.lifejourney.us.
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 17

APPENDIX A: Q & A

1. What current metrics and data exist for cybersecurity education, training, and workforce developments, and

what improvements are needed in the collection, organization, and sharing of information about cybersecurity

education, training, and workforce development programs?

LifeJourney is focused on creating the next generation of the cyber workforce. As such we are engaged across the

education spectrum. To date our programs have reached a wide range of students, including:

● Over 5 million students and other users interested in cybersecurity have signed up to experience a “Cyber

Journey”, as reported by the NSA in CyberScoop.

● Current registration rates are tracking to total more than 1.4 million students, 16,000 instructors and

300,000 schools across the United States by the end of 2017.

2. Isthere sufficient understanding and agreement about workforce categories,specialty areas, work roles, and

knowledge/skills/abilities?

There is a sufficient understanding of the workforce categories as well as the skills and knowledge currently

needed to be a successful cybersecurity professional. However, these categories and skills are dynamic. As

technology changes and threat vectors evolve, so too must the knowledge and skill set. Government, academia

and the private sector should work together to evaluate on a regular basis the changing skill set, roles and

workforce categories needed to meet the threats of the future. NICE would have a natural role in convening such

a group and monitoring the needs.

Further detail provided in Section 2, pp 3.

3. Are appropriate cybersecurity policiesin place in your organization regarding workforce education and

training efforts and are those policiesregularly and consistently enforced?

While LifeJourney indeed has regularly enforced policies in place in its own workplace, as a vendor we provide

partners, and educators with the tools to do the same in their organizations. Tools include capabilities to monitor,

manage and report on progress and status of individuals in their local corpus of Day of Cyber users.

4. What types of knowledge orskills do employers need or value as they build their cybersecurity workforce?

Are employer expectationsrealistic? Why or why not? Are these expectations in line with the knowledge and

skills of the existing workforce orstudent pipeline? How do these types of knowledge and skills vary by role,

industry, and sector, (e.g., energy vs financialsectors)?

The cyber landscape continues to change. Employers need to know that their cyber workforce has the practical

working knowledge to address new threats. They also have to have opportunities for training and continuing

education. Online training is both flexible, can adapt to changing needs such as creating modules for specific

sectors, but it can also reach a wide audience. Employers expectations are realistic. Education and training

programs are adapting to cover the evolving threat and throughout the Cyber Education Operating System

students are being properly prepared. While we are slowly building the pipeline for future cyber professionals,

we must emphasize generating the interest in a cyber career at an early age and throughout the education

system. And, we must also focus on building capacity behind what currently exists or we will continue to fall into

the cycle of trying the close the gap in terms of numbers of professionals needed while the the goal line keeps

moving further and further away.

5. Which are the most effective cybersecurity education, training, and workforce development programs being

conducted in the United Statestoday? What makesthose programs effective? What are the goalsfor these

programs and how are they successful in reaching their goals? Are there examples of effective/scalable

cybersecurity, education, training, and workforce development programs?
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 18

There are a number of successful programs in place today related to cyber education programs at universities,

with professional organizations and in the private sector. I would highlight again the NSA Day of Cyber that has

signed up over 5 million participants to raise awareness and the overall cyber IQ among students across the

countries at various levels of education. As a partner in this programs, we see the public -private partnership as a

strong opportunity to promote cyber awareness and education. Given the growing workforce gap and the risk to

our national security, we need bold programs that can reach wide audiences to inspire the next generation of

cyber leaders. We strongly believe that scalable programs like the NSA Day of Cyber are necessary and should be

seen as a model for future engagement by the government and in partnership with the private sector.

6. What are the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the Nation, employers, and workersin terms of

cybersecurity education, training, and workforce development?

Use and the expansion of technology continues to grow. There is no end in sight. Unfortunately, the demand for

cybersecurity professionals is severely outpacing the current ability of government and businesses to fill that

need. This is a national security problem that must be addressed. We believe a comprehensive cybersecurity

program from middle school through university must be in place to meet the growing demand for cyber

professionals. This should be supplemented with a training program for current professionals, including those that

are looking to enter the field of cybersecurity. The bottom line is that we must build interest starting at a young

age and we must build capacity throughout the pipeline. Any program must be flexible and have the ability to

scale to meet the growing demand. Ultimately, though success requires that we expand the number of educators

capable of teaching cybersecurity. Professional development efforts like the LifeJourney’s Cyber Teacher

certification program are critical to building capacity and meeting demand.

7. How will advancesin technology (e.g., artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, etc.) or other factors affect

the cybersecurity workforce needed in the future? How much do cybersecurity education, training, and

workforce development programs need to adapt to prepare the workforce to protect modernized cyber

physicalsystems(CPS)?

As technologies evolve and advance, new threats become present. Thus the cyber workforce most also evolve to

maintain its effectiveness. This requires a dynamic education and training program. Online interactive training

programs are preferable and can provide the flexibility to innovate around our cyber education system. They can

complement hands-on training with new technologies. This approach can apply to training the current cyber

workforce or in preparing our future cyber workforce. We need to start early and engage students as early as

middle school to get them comfortable with new technologies and the propersecurity response to new risk

vectors like the Internet of Things, and others.

8. Whatsteps or programsshould be continued, modified, discontinued, or introduced to grow and sustain the

Nation's cybersecurity workforce, taking into account needs and trends? Whatstepsshould be taken:

i. At the Federal level?

At the federal level, we need more programs like the NSA Day of Cyber that can reach broad audiences.

We need programs that highlight other areas of cyber protection in the critical infrastructure. And we

need investment in ourschools and teachers to build the capacity need to close the cyber workforce gap.

ii. At the state or local level, including schoolsystems?

We believe that it is important to start engaging students early on in the learning cycle to raise awareness

and generate interest in a cyber career path. Students need to know that a cyber career path exists and

that there is a critical need. Regardless of the number of students who pursue a cyber career, we need to

raise the overall cyber IQ in our nation.

Training “cyber teachers” to ensure that we can grow capacity is crucial.
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 19

iii. By the private sector, including employers?

Employers should invest in their current employees by providing training and continual education

programs. They should also invest and work with education and training providers to identify and

communicate their workforce needs. The private sector can support programs in schools to help grow the

pipeline. They should consider providing mentors in a scalable way to help support students interested in

pursuing a career in cyber.

iv. By education and training providers?

Education and training should partner with government and the private sector to ensure that their

training programs are meeting the needs of employers and are evolving to prepare students and

professionals to better protect against cyber threats.

v. By technology providers?

Technology providers have an important role to play as well. We believe that focusing on secure

development practices including software assurance is critical. There will continue to be emerging risks as

new technologies come online. There will be a rush to get new product to market without consideration

for security. This mindset must change. We need to create a generation that innovates with security in

mind.
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 20

APPENDIX B: Supporting Graphics

Mapping of University Courses to NSA Cyber Expert Mentors

Mapping of NIST Cybersecurity Workforce Careers to NSA Mentors
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 21

Related Discussion:

Processing students to create the Next Cyber Generation

using the Cyber Education OS in the Education Process
~ LifeJourney, LLC ~ 22

Cyber University Dashboard

Reports provide unique visibility of Cyber Reach into University Education Network,

showing participating population totals, gender mix, grade and age distribution, cyber

mentor/career preferences, and more.