NICE FRAMEWORK SUCCESS STORY 

National Cyber League

Cyber Skyline

Measure Skills

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. 

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE 

The National Cyber League (NCL) was founded as a 

501(c)3 non-profit organization in 2011 by an alliance 

of public agencies dedicated to developing the next 

generation of cybersecurity professionals. The NCL 

student competition is hosted by Cyber Skyline, an 

industry-leading cybersecurity cloud platform. Cyber 

Skyline enables students, faculty, and professionals 

to practice, develop, and measure individual and 

team technical cybersecurity skills at all skill levels. 

NCL is an online, performance-based, learningcentered collegiate cybersecurity competition held 

twice a year during the academic spring and fall 

semesters. Nine skills categories give students the 

ability to challenge themselves across critical areas of 

knowledge that are aligned to the NIST NICE 

Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. The categories 

are:

1. Open Source Intelligence

2. Cryptography

3. Log Analysis

4. Password Cracking

5. Network Traffic Analysis

6. Scanning & Reconnaissance

7. Web Application Exploitation

8. Enumeration & Exploitation

9. Forensics

NCL is both a competition and a community, with a 

dedicated Players Committee and Coaches 

Committee to provide student player and faculty 

coach support and learning resources. 

TIE-IN WITH THE NICE FRAMEWORK 

Mapping the NCL challenges to the NICE 

Framework allows student players and faculty 

coaches to quickly and easily understand an 

individual’s or a team’s areas of strength and 

weakness. The mapping further provides a 

common lexicon for industry employers to 

understand the relevant skills of the NCL 

participants, enabling recruiters and hiring 

managers to rapidly identify candidate skills and 

strengths. Overall, this alignment provides a 

pathway into cybersecurity careers, addressing 

the ever-increasing demand for cybersecurity 

professionals. 

DRIVERS

The core goals of the NCL are to:

• Bridge the gap between curriculum to

career: Providing a scalable and interactive

environment for hands-on application of

classroom knowledge.

• Promote inclusivity: Giving all students—no

matter their knowledge level, background,

or access to technology—the ability to

demonstrate to prospective employers their

mastery of cybersecurity concepts and skills.

• Ensure industry relevancy: Providing usable

and simple reporting to help employers hire

collegiate cybersecurity talent more easily.

We recognized that using the NICE Framework 

as part of the competition would help us to 

achieve these goals.
–

NICE FRAMEWORK SUCCESS STORY 

National Cyber League, Cyber Skyline

PROCESS

Every challenge in the NCL is created to meet the 

skills requirements of the modern cybersecurity 

industry by observing trends in recent cybersecurity 

events and analyzing the latest threat feeds. As a 

result, challenges created for the NCL are inherently 

skills-based and require the student players to 

perform technical action to solve the challenge. Each 

challenge is mapped to the relevant NICE 

Framework Skills statements, which not only further 

emphasizes the skill-based approach but connects 

the challenge to a national framework of communityrecognized cybersecurity skills. 

In addition, the main mapping spreadsheet also 

shows the relationship between the identified NICE 

Framework Skill statements and NICE Framework 

Work Roles—establishing a connection between the 

challenges and the real-world work that employers 

require. These connections are shared with the 

players and employers on the NCL Scouting Report, 

as shown in Figure 1.

BENEFITS & IMPACT

• The mapping of NCL challenges to the NICE

Framework gives student players and their

faculty coaches a new tool to focus on areas

of strength or weakness.

• The mapping helps reinforce the relevancy

the NCL challenges to real-world

cybersecurity work. Students can utilize the

mapping to explore career opportunities

and see how their skills translate to realworld work roles.

• Using the NICE Framework helps the NCL

team identify challenge areas lacking skill

coverage, so that new challenges can be

developed and incorporated to cover a

wider range of cybersecurity skills.

• Employers who already leverage the NICE

Framework can plug the NCL Scouting

Report results into their existing workflow

and hire qualified candidates more rapidly

CONTACT INFORMATION & RESOURCES

Contacts:

David Zeichick, NCL Commissioner 

dzeichick@nationalcyberleague.com

info@nationalcyberleague.com

Websites:

nationalcyberleague.org 

cyberskyline.com/events/ncl

February 2022

NICE Framework Website: nist.gov/nice/framework 

Contact Us: niceframework@nist.gov 

Figure 1: Excerpt from a NCL Scouting Report—module performance with top NICE Work Roles.