Cyber.org believes K-12 cyber education is the key to solving the cyber workforce shortage.
CYBER.ORG, the academic initiative of The Cyber Innovation Center, is a cybersecurity workforce development organization that targets K-12 students with cyber career awareness through curricular resources and professional development for teachers. Cyber.org is in the process of creating standards for K-12 education in regards to Cybersecurity. These standards are set to be fully implementable by the 2022-2023 school year. The goal is to solve the cyber work force shortage. Currently, the demand for cybersecurity talent is outpacing the supply. By 2022, 1.8 million cyber jobs are projected to be unfilled.
There are numerous online courses available now that educators can use in the classroom, including topics such as coding, robotics, physics, computer science, cyber literacy, cybersecurity fundamentals, and much more. The courses are listed here: https://cyber.org/find-curricula
The current college and certification programs are creating excellent coders and application developers. The problem is that they are not security-centric in their mindset. They are pushing out websites./applications that have very basic security flaws in them. If we push a more comprehensive education that incorporates cybersecurity to a younger audience, they will develop the skills needed to put out more secure code/applications.
We need to get these curriculum resources to as many school boards as possible. Let’s set this next generation up for success by getting them this much needed education.