NNSA pushes for more people to consider careers in cybersecurity

In observance of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recently called upon more people to consider careers in cybersecurity as part of a push to fill more than 209,000 unfulfilled cybersecurity jobs in the United States.

“We are focused on attracting, training and retaining top cyber talent throughout our federal and contractor workforce alike,” NNSA Chief Information Officer Wayne Jones said.

Through its 2017-2019 Strategic Implementation Plan for information management, the NNSA established a strategic principle that called for “investing in employee development to cultivate a high-performing workforce that will support its mission today and into the future.”

According to NNSA, the principle signals the agency’s commitment to growing the nation’s existing workforce with the skills to detect, protect and defend against the latest cyber threats.

NNSA also developed a number of initiatives to train its current personnel including establishing an Enterprise Cybersecurity Awareness Training Program, sponsoring cyber defenders across the administration to lead training events and hackathons, and sharing best practices across the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) enterprise through programs such as the Sandia Center for Excellence for Cyber Threat Intelligence.

NNSA noted that positions were currently available at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.