In September 2020, the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI) - a DHS Science & Technology (S&T) Center of Excellence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - led a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)-funded project and team of academic partners (Auburn University, Purdue University, University of Tulsa) in the creation of a comprehensive plan to develop a nationwide cybersecurity education and training hub & spoke network to address the nation’s chronic and urgent cybersecurity workforce shortage. The envisioned national network will develop and deliver Incident Response (IR) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) curricula conformant with the NIST National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Framework.

This presentation discusses the research findings from this project related to the current state of IR curriculum (degrees, certificates, technical courses) in the CAE community and makes the case for an increase in the number of CAE schools focusing on this critical area.