The Hill News

A recent white paper written under the auspices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), asserts that the federal government should disregard existing professional cybersecurity certifications in favor of supposedly more advanced ones that test both knowledge and skills, and even goes so far as to claim that existing certifications are wasting scarce resources. 

Talk about an absurd notion, and one that certainly does not need to be legislated. Let’s take it apart bit by bit.  

First, cybersecurity professionalization involves far more than technical knowledge. Moreover, it is a field that is changing and growing more rapidly than any other field involving federal employees, with the possible exception of healthcare. Yet, the Office of Personnel Management has not seen fit to create a job specialty series for the cybersecurity workforce, or otherwise to determine the knowledge, skills and abilities, or the career path for these professionals. The principal authors of the white paper are two former Office of Management and Budget officials who, during their tenure inside the government, could have easily moved OPM in the right direction to create a series for the cybersecurity professional.

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