Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

How the Energy Department wants to boost cybersecurity education

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Cyber Security Energy Independence

Comments: 0

The Department of Energy’s cybersecurity office wants to focus on educating both technical and non-technical energy-sector stakeholders in the course of the next year.

“Awareness is a key issue. Right now, everyone is very ... focused on their own silo and you don’t realize how the supply chain impacts you,” said Sean Plankey, the principal deputy assistant secretary for cybersecurity, energy, security and emergency response at the Department of Energy.

Plankey said that the department is going to expand three education programs that it uses to interact with both universities and private industry.

“We have to find better ways to understand and close that skills gap in operational technology,” Plankey said at the RSA Public Sector Day 2020. “It’s not up to the schools to do this.”

In 2020, the Energy Department wants to make data available from its national CyberForce competition, an annual contest hosted at all the national labs where university teams defend networks from red teams. About 120 schools participate, creating a hiring pipeline for the labs and the rest of the department.

“You should be able to hire off that pipeline knowing what these students and professionals went through in this competition,” Plankey said.

Energy is also looking at expanding its CyberStrike program, a hands-on industrial control system training. That training includes nontechnical officials, including first responders and the local FBI field office.

The department wants to expand that program from 15 training events to 150.

“We want the people that will be working together in an emergency to understand what each other is thinking,” Plankey said.

The department also wants to up investment in its Consequence-driven, cyber-enabled engineering program, run out of Idaho National Labs. In this program, the lab brings together technical and non-technical operators to teach them how nation-state actors target their networks and supply chain.

This year, the department wants to train up to 2,000 people.

The effort by the department is part of a broader, whole-of-government approach to bolster the lack of cybersecurity skills in the workforce, a problem that troubles both the private and public sector. At the federal level, the Office of Management and Budget has started a cyber reskilling academy for federal employees, but found limited success due to issues with hiring requirements for feds.

These are problems that government and private industry need to work together to solve.

“A threat to one is a threat to all in this space,” Plankey said.

Photo: An official outlined where the Department of Energy sees opportunities to boost the cybersecurity workforce in both the private and public sector. (John Minchillo/AP)

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