Top U.S. officials to discuss cybersecurity hiring during White House summit

Top U.S. cybersecurity officials and heads of several executive departments are slated to meet at the White House Tuesday to discuss ways to fill the hundreds of thousands of open cybersecurity positions in the U.S., the Biden administration announced Monday.

Participants at the White House National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit include: Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Jen Easterly, and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger, among others.

In a press announcement, the White House said the summit will "serve as a call to action – to ensure that all Americans can capitalize on the benefits of the digital domain and to ensure that our Nation carries through on the positive opportunities ahead of us."

A focus of the event will be discussing ways to create new pathways to cybersecurity jobs, especially through community colleges, apprenticeship programs, and non-traditional training opportunities.

Employers in the U.S. added more than 714,000 job postings for cybersecurity roles between April 2021 and April 2022, according to a June study from CyberSeek, a joint initiative between the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, job market analytics firm Emsi Burning Glass, and tech industry nonprofit CompTIA.

Inglis, Mayorkas, and other government officials have made it a priority to help fill the gap for cybersecurity talent, and have introduced programs to promote training opportunities and spur hiring in both the public and private sectors.

“We need to re-examine those jobs and understand which part of those people are attempting to substitute for technology,” Inglis said at the RSA Conference last month. “It might not be that every one of those needs a computer science degree or electrical engineering degree… Let’s take a look at the other end of that and make sure that we’ve opened these possibilities to the broadest possible population.”

The White House's forthcoming cybersecurity strategy, which is being spearheaded by Inglis and his team, is expected to address ways to strengthen the U.S.'s cybersecurity workforce and close the hiring gap, CyberScoop reported last week.