 perfect. Thank you. This gentleman standing next to me looking like a rock star is Dr. Keith Clement and he's a rock star in real life. He's been directing the California Cybersecurity Task Force Subcommittee on Education and I'm honored to have him here and he's going to make sure that this presentation goes accurately. Good afternoon or good morning. How is everyone doing today? And thank you very much Myron. I know that we've worked together for quite a few years probably back to 2013 on this Cybersecurity Career Education Pipeline Pathway Project and it's nice to see things move from the design phase to the development phase. Yeah and it's about time but everything takes time in the academic world and in the business world as well I guess. I think we did I think we did it wrong I think that I think that waiting until later in the process to bring industry on board education initiatives is always always a troublesome deal. That being said it's also difficult for industry to sometimes see what education is up to and where they're going so I I don't know whether you want to build the education partnerships first or the industry partnerships first and then combine everybody but I think that's really been an interesting component of all of it. Yeah and that's something that everybody needs to take notes on because building these career pathways and having courses in the schools from K-12 all the way up to even PhDs is critical because otherwise nobody really takes this stuff seriously. I've agreed I think that I think that one of the key obstacles I'm a very positive perennial optimistic fellow but I think that one of the barriers and limitations has been getting full engagement from the government side the industry side and the higher education side. There are so many moving parts there it really seems to be more about coordination these days and partnerships in you know previous models of academics or traditional workforce models would suggest. Right and really because we are all connected to the same internet if one person is not practicing cybersecurity or as we like to call it cyber hygiene it puts all of us at risk so educating the public educating potential workers down the line something that is a major part of achieving some kind of cybersecurity so getting started here it's wait for to res a little bit well that's resing for me anyway yeah doesn't the cyber hygiene just roll off the tongue and it's easy to understand because just like you wouldn't want somebody to make a solid for you if they've never washed their hands why would you ever want anybody hooking up to the same network as you if they've never run any kind of malware protection anyway here's a message on the board from Keith that he put together and it's pretty straightforward we're trying to make sure that we have collaborative partnerships you know we need to meet industry and professional committees communities rather and assist and support the accreditation movement you know um Keith do you have anything more to add to that I so let's take in a step back okay education education institutions tend to be very traditional and resistive of innovation types of practices so when we talk about a cyber hygiene or we talk about IT and cybersecurity or comp side based education what we know is that we need to start the education process as early as possible and I think that's been really one of the difficult components of contemporary cyber education is how do we increase the literacy of of the younger kids in school well before they get on to the job market which is what many you know career pipelines tend to focus on and and so I think that is really one of the key issues is how do we project this early into the process and thus as they get older and again I mean this in a transformative societal sense that as the collective skills of all of us improve through digital education and cyber hygiene and and and these little things that that many of us are just now coming into grasp with that I think that's when the time would be right to really types of career pipelines and pathways right and as somehow this slide jumped but it's probably a good place for it you know there is a dangerous shortage of cyber security professionals and while there's been some certification training in the you know the community colleges and high schools there really hasn't been much else and to be honest before people can get into those certifications they really have to have an understanding of what cyber security is and why it's important so getting these courses down to the k-12 kindergarten through 12th grade and then into the you know community colleges and the four-year colleges is something that is going to be really important when we start trying to fill these job vacancies agreed I I like to think of a career pipeline as the way my English teacher taught me how to write and that is that each paragraph or each level of education must shake hands with the with the programs that came before it and after it so we talked to the middle schools what is the tie to the elementary school what is the tie to the high school we look at the high schools what is their alignment to the middle school and to the community college or so-called two-year schools and what is the two-year school alignment to k-12 education and the four-year school and then for most of the folks by that time they will have reached their entry point into the workforce with the understanding that some are going to need master's degrees or doctoral degrees for example professors of criminal or a computer science or right and you know it's really not just about filling job vacancies although that is critical in our society today but just having the general user knowing a little more intelligently how to use the system without getting the trouble is something that's been lacking in in our society and all together I mean people still click on links that they know basically at heart that nobody's going to put a million dollars in their email account or their bank account you know the Nigerian oil minister's widow is not going to send you money and no you don't give out your social security but you talk to law enforcement and those things still constantly happen so aside from filling jobs training our society is something that we've been lacking there there's some interesting stuff going on currently in the chat right now about the the difficulty or perceived difficulty of getting students interested in technology and I think one of the things that we're trying to do here in California is set up a soft start program so like for example I had not been on second life for a couple of years and navigating around for the first time you know it could have could have been more easier easier whatever I could have paid more attention to the instruction or whatever but but but the issue here is that so many folks get dropped into a comp side course or whatever whatever the tech component happens to be and they they don't have a soft start into it they we really need to start earlier and earlier at a at an age appropriate level slowly bringing them up to speed in an earlier earlier years for example just going to the word and the microsoft office products I mean who would have when I was in high school we never ever thought how important it would have been to actually pay attention to that class whereas in 2020 you don't pay attention to your excel class you're doomed so I think that that what we're trying to do is find a soft start so that kids younger and younger feel more comfortable with the technology and then they can use their own creativity and interests to branch out into the specific areas of their interest and focus right and you know one of the things virtual world has taught me is how rich and varied the user experience really can be and it's also highlighted something that I tended to take for granted while I was learning and studying cybersecurity myself and the importance of that importance is of social engineering or psychology being in a virtual world suddenly makes it very very clear that that is probably the root of all evil you know I think that that's a perfect example of the value of gamification and social experiment as books or ways to get our students into this earlier and earlier and I think those are perfect examples of two of the seemingly solid pathways I think cyber competitions is another solid pathway but I think those are two groups of students that really seem to accelerate their learning and do well in this area I agree yeah and um I'm hoping that other states other nations are probably getting involved in trying to get this these pathways built up but California has been taking the lead on this and I'm really glad that there's somebody who's got an example coming on you know like this slide says workforce development education doesn't really change fast enough I know in my own experience was working with industry that a lot of times the administrators don't necessarily know what they need in terms of cybersecurity and in some cases they simply don't want to own making a mistake so that's a challenge into developing all of this but it is vital that we develop a worldwide strategy to train workers and you know the cybersecurity issues are growing and they're going to become more and more challenging so I'm a candid and a direct fellow and so I apologize if some folks don't like what I'm about to say in about 30 seconds or three that is that we I understand the value of competencies I understand the value of skills I understand knowledge skills I understand all that stuff the fact of the matter is that the current employer right now in 2020 is looking for a four-year degree in something related to IT or computer science or business systems or software whatever degree is not important as long as it's technology related so between 65 to 70 of employers for cybersecurity positions and information security positions it's a little higher in that field 65 to 70 bachelor's degree of some type and and or some areas like California will allow you to substitute some years of experience for education so you could have a two-year two-year degree in a couple years and get the job that way and so the career pipeline really needs to incorporate all the bullets onto this into a career pipeline that for many folks is going to end in a four-year degree plus a few industry certifications that they're going to hook up with in the process of education some at the community college some at a four-year school and tech some folks are probably getting these certificates in middle and high schools now as well but in any case the the real focus here dark eagle is on model curriculum and academic standards and that is that we we have a standardized yet flexible curriculum and standards that is directed at all of the levels of education that we're talking about here in california it goes back to the about the seventh grade with what we call career technical education and new slide i hope i didn't change it too fast no no i no so i think that what we're trying to say is that all of the things that you see on this slide are examples of things that we need to incorporate into into a career pipeline right somebody must have clicked on it i haven't locked this presentation board down so it changes when anybody clicks on it but anyway a lot of the things you've talked about haven't existed and some still don't there are very few four-year degrees nationwide in cyber security itself and we desperately need those because as you said industry expects those so inclusivity and diversity had long been a concern in in tech fields and what we see in inclusivity and diversity is a couple of things i think that a general pipeline exists that we would consider to some degree inclusive and diverse however i think that the problem is now one of retention so right we're trying to get we're trying to get people to work in these areas and then we want them to stay working in these areas and i think that we need to be developing strategies both to align folks into and having the proper skills to get the jobs and also a supportive environment that keeps people on the job long term or if not on that specific job at least within the field so there's nothing wrong with going to a better job at a you know nicer office up and down the street no and uh this is almost as much a pr problem you know public relations as it is a challenge to actually get these people in there many especially minorities if they don't see a role model there they've learned over the decades really or maybe even centuries that they don't belong there so we need to not only get people into these positions but show them off a little bit make sure that you know potential workers in these fields see that they do belong best best practices here is that peer mentoring is best done with representative groups so and also mentoring is often best done in small groups as well as one-on-one types of mentoring but i want to but i want to go back to that that slide because it was talking about soft start and what's important is that there are many there are many diverse communities that are what we call first generation learners in the education system but they're also first generation tech people like my dad was an intro computer programmer from the late 60s on so you know if i ever had a tech question or a computer need i was pretty well covered growing up but for lots of folks that exactly but for lots of folks that do not have the education system background they don't have something to go to and they're having a problem in their math class and they have the additional limitation of no tech to speak of in the family or you know they can't go to the uncle to talk about these things how to get a job in the field for example that we really do need a soft start program so that these introductory novel students actually feel welcome in the field first of all but second and this is critical they need to know that they can be successful in this area too and not just the not just the student but their family as well it's their families that are going to be able to tell them you know the kid says i'm having a hard time in my cyber or my computer science class the parent might not have ever taken that class themselves what they know to say is hey it's you know you'll do just fine we know you got this we're behind you here and you know that's all the support many people need to just be successful true and as far as learning how to do these things you know there are so many resources online already the big challenge is getting people directed to the resources and frankly making sure they actually have access to online because about a quarter of americans do not imagine that's probably true across the world so i i think that you're right and and i think that there's three areas that these california cyber security education clearing houses of value the first is it serves as educational and instructor stuff and then secondly it includes worker and employers and industry i mean that's how you could set up the the mentoring network that you were talking about that's where you could have a variety of resources and links embedded and then third i think that we could have the diversity and inclusion piece in it as well resources dedicated to specific populations that have not seen success either in the workplace necessarily or at tech workplaces specifically and i would also like to include i mean not only representation of women and historically underrepresented groups but also the key inclusion of veterans disabled veterans military transitioning to civilian life you know there are millions and millions of folks all across the world and in california for example that um they they could all that they know what they want to do they just don't know the specific steps to get there and i think all that information would be bet embedded on this clearing house so your high school guidance counselor or your middle school guidance counselor could say when a kid sits down in their office and wants a job in cyber security they'd say huh i wonder how you do that and they pull it up on the computer and they showed the screen to the kid and it says step one do this step two right then you're doing that step three talk to these people step four here's the link i mean etc etc yeah cookbook you know and uh it's never made a lot of sense to me especially um when we're talking about filling jobs why we try to exclude literally 50 percent of the population women from even getting into these you know careers um that's just insane to me so you're definitely right that we do have to have this inclusivity and this diversity and it's a key element in everything we're doing here yeah no i'm i'm looking at the chat i'm looking at the chat in in all of this and uh the the need for diversity and inclusion is is key not not just so that we check the boxes mind you right not not just so that the the the hr paperwork is you know sufficiently diverse and inclusive but it needs to be deeper than that that we need to find you know that you know that's one thing about tech isn't it it is not just a job it's a it is a lifestyle it is an attitude it is a culture and and those are the things that are auxiliary to the job at hand but we need to support folks in all of those related endeavors that's why for example we're very supportive cyber competitions very supportive of extracurricular activities we want kids to be spending summers and after schools in these kinds of programs and let's be honest they have to be open and available to everybody and this is one reason why the broadband discussion that's going on worldwide is of concern because there are many areas of which about a third of the kids do not have access to high speed networks necessary for academic success and that area goes up and it goes down but it tends to really be high in inner city urban areas and out in remote isolated countryside locations so there is a urban and a rural component to lack of broadband access equity and equality yeah i hope 5g will help but you know when i was working in the school systems i had one school where the kids lived literally a half hour away from internet access yet their homework consistently required them to use the network internet to get information to do their homework so they would literally go home from school half our bus ride have dinner and their parents would drive them back into paradise california which burned down right and uh then they could do their homework at a wireless cafe somewhere total insanity we finally got a wireless access point for them in sterling city where they lived and made a world of different amazing how that helped them i appreciate a comment from shilo e talking about uh indian reservations and sovereign tribal nations and the difficulty of areas like the res in terms of having access to you know not only you know let's not let's not even talk about broadband and that basic access they just don't have access to the instructors and educators that they need they don't have you know how many large tech companies are adjoining reservation land that spends a lot of time on workforce development in that community um i'll wait and look into the chat for you know anything to come up because that's an example of a very underserved community in in all of this but again we're trying to make things better for everybody and and i think that one of the ways that we do this uh looking at the slide i think we jumped a slide but um oh yeah but it goes back to this pipeline that is virtualized and available to most right against we already said about 30 percent of students don't have access to the internet that they need to to get the job done so i mean we're trying to be as inclusive of everybody that we can and until we figure out broadband and access for all there's still going to be only certain populations that we're going to be able to to deal with but but we're talking about standards at all levels of education again that shake hands with the education programs before and after them and of course linkedin all this we have the cyber hygiene awareness i saw an earlier comment about a lack of labs and when we talk about education programs we mean that there are adjoining labs to them so it's not it's not just the classroom side of things but in a very hands-on field such as this where you have to like like do things right that we want to see a lot of hands-on specialized training so we're talking programs with linked labs we're appropriate you know i there's plenty of content that doesn't need a lab to it for example like the history of that i think i saw from vic um i believe earlier um and of course the linkage of all this across levels of education so the high school or transitions easily to the two-year school the community college student translates easily into the four-year school or or wherever their job is right this is not all about education and it's not all about careers and workforce it's how you combine the two in a way that makes sense and is achievable and attainable by folks that are interested in these fields and if they don't know that they want to be interested in the field that's on us that that that's an example of if folks i've seen in the thread how can i help or what can we do to help i think that's a perfect example of of being able to help right there in your own communities and getting folks excited about these and as educators for educators here once they get to us at the education level it's our job as stewards to bring them through the process shepherd them through a education program that links and aligns with their career dreams and aspirations and then we support them in doing whatever education or workforces necessary for them get the job oh yeah i totally agree and there are so many antidotes that come to mind on this but uh you know moving along one of the things we're doing with all of this is we want to set up a system where graduates can actually just demonstrate that they have the required abilities you know that there are standards at all levels with the education to support a vertical track of training and back to cyber hygiene you know all of this if even if it doesn't lead somebody to a career they need to have a greater awareness of how they affect the overall i guess climate is a good word for it of the network security agreed okay i'm gonna move on to the next slide here this one kind of covers you know the basics of what we're actually doing this is the the practical side of it a lot i mean this slide is kind of just deceptive because it really doesn't talk about all the work that's gone on in the background getting model curriculum together working with industry and different government organizations to actually try to get the schools to adopt these courses and of course budgeting is critical to get teachers so we have to have professional development for those who want to get involved but really have the skills you have to teach these courses getting these things into the graduate programs and faculty research and treat this is a lot of work that's been going on behind the a lot of people are literally the reason why it's taken so long even get to this step so you're gonna you're gonna have to hold me back here for a second i hope y'all are sitting down and or have a frothy cup of coffee or ice cold libation depending on your time zone because this really is the bottom line this this slide right here encapsulates it all so first bullet point k to 12 cyber education programs so we're talking first education programs these education programs are made out of courses that align in various ways to certificate and other kinds of education programs these courses are made up of cutting edge curriculum which means that they're cutting edge today yet they also retain flexibility so that every academic year we can go back and review the curriculum to make sure that it's in line or up to date that really is one of the problems that education has is that there are so many advances in innovation and technology and let me be clear the curriculum process of most university systems is going to take you a couple years and that's after it's developed mind you not not counting that's the bureaucratic and administrative processes it takes years to get curriculum done well in any case how fast does innovation change you know by the time i said that comment there's a bunch of obsolete technology so the curriculum must be up to date and it must be kept up to date and curriculum extra curriculum activities are essential you just can't do what we're talking about here in the classroom necessarily in a lecture they need to be aligned to a variety of extracurricular activities that drive the interest of the younger generations you know the stuff that sounds fun to me doesn't sound fun to people that are younger just like just vice versa right it's like music and these these kinds of things they change over time so we need to make sure that over time they change to reflect the current interests of folks so when we were talking earlier about having challenges getting younger people and students into cyber and it programs actually it's the extracurricular pathway that's probably the most likely way to do it because it's fun right it's fun and then they find out they're learning and by that time it's already hook line and sinker and they're there but second the second bullet here uh let's see here there's some chat here that's related like a club you bet uh hackathons capture the flags bug bounties having the the the fellows from the or gals from the local tech company go and show off some some fun things uh you know get hooked up with various communities uh have some fun webinars right there's go to online museums i mean i i could talk all day about the types of extracurriculars that would go on to here um yeah yeah yeah shiloe that's exactly what we're talking about um yeah but in any case the two-year so we need two-year four-year degree programs because as earlier stipulated 65 to 70 percent of current employers require that not to say that that's always going to be in the case and that those numbers are coming down and many employers do recognize skills and certifications not degrees and some theoretical science so i i get that but having two-year four-year degrees that are available and graduate programs dark ego i want to talk just the briefest about that the the idea of graduate programs is not because entry-level jobs and it and cybersecurity require master's degrees but there are plenty of management jobs that do and and we need to be thinking of the whole talent model here right i mean not everybody's going to go work in a sock right there there's there's a legislative stuff there's you know uh philanthropical interests here there's educators in this space big small medium company all these kinds of things we need graduate programs so that we can teach and develop a infrastructure and capability to teach it and cybersecurity in our schools which means that we're using these graduate programs to educate new instructors for k to 12 that are comfortable in these tech fields and also a new generation of instructors and professors that will be turning out four-year graduate two-year graduates and engineering it cyber business information systems right and then you know the real world faculty research um has literally been how we've developed a lot of these programs and learning what our vulnerabilities really are in cybersecurity really does depend on investigation and research that can almost only be done in a correct in a academic setting i mean it's been that way for years and years you're correct and actually shilo e just mentioned a a point in the chat just a second ago that i want to go back to and re-emphasize that we don't we're not only talking about some hard stem or steam right to include the arts steam programs we're not just including tech degree programs bachelor of science and cyber is one but there's a second degree program that we're working on called a dual baccalaureate degree program in cybersecurity that is actually just a six core sequence of an interdisciplinary nature that is intended to serve as a double major for all for majors all across a university campus so for example a english major or an anthropology major one of the heavy critical thinking and superior communication based majors linked up with a more technical base that you didn't hear me use the word math but a more technical base and that program is actually linked to a 2000 hour on the job apprenticeship requirement ojt on the job training so the student would basically graduate college with a two-year degree or i'm sorry a four-year degree in a double major with the second major being in a technical field it will be a technical couple of classes don't get me wrong with a soft start to the program right so we don't just drop somebody into the middle of some hard program you know we there's a soft start to get them to that program like for example one thing that's difficult in the tech or outside of the tech fields is keeping up on all the acronyms and vpns and you know all these acast and you know all that's ip you know we really get people up to speed on that terminology before we start really expecting anything out of them right i mean if they're having to go back to their their dictionary to find out what all these terms mean we got to do a better job on a soft start yeah i agree you know one of my favorite lines from one of the uh transformer movies was the guy saying okay now keep up with the acronyms as he's heading into a another disaster and you know that it's pretty true it's a whole new language and need to teach that language see i think we covered most of this on this slide here about professional development apprenticeships are important i know you've done a lot of work on that and still belong with internships we haven't talked a lot about project management yet but that's another critical critical aspect of cybersecurity that people don't necessarily look at i'm just reading kutta keep up with the acronyms yeah yeah what does lol mean i'm not at lol well what's so so in talking to industry and and government employers about 95 of current cyber jobs are found in the private sector about one in five are found for government or quasi government based agencies but across 100 of all of them they are seeking as part of the education training process excellent exposure to what they call project management and basically what we mean by that is the ability to start follow through and complete a project from start to finish including say the grant writing and the grant management side all the way to how you actually implement and and do the project and how you assess and evaluate your success of the project and what they want is somebody that is comfortable across all aspects of the project management process so that's what that's what you tend to hear from it cyber employers what they mean when they're seeking a project management person right and project management has been growing in in how critical it is over the past decade really and it's kind of bled over into a lot of different fields including sales for example so it's no surprise that it's critical here in cyber security but it does make it challenging to train people because project management is a whole field to study in and of itself it is it is um i i do have a quick comment about bullet number two we've already spoken about diversity and and inclusivity when we were first working on this project and and if i don't get the terms right or i'm not i'm just i'm candid i'm not trying to be you know difficult of course when we when we are first thinking diversity and inclusivity strategies and it in cyber security we actually included strategies directed at just the the general diversity side of the house and instead what's emerged is that there is a need for strategies that are in some part different and in other parts the same across groups so for example we need there are strategies that are directed to enhancing recruitment retention for women for folks from ethnic and racial minorities and for the vet military vet not saying that they don't cross over multiple pathways a lot of them cover some of the same things but they also differ in some profound ways as well so i want to say that over time we actually separate i don't know if the next slide talks about the um yes that the next slide cuts into this as well if you just want to go to that um we seek strategies to enhance participation of underrepresented historical backgrounds and the the challenges are similar but somewhat different and the strategies to deal with special population groups this is the rest so we so we have strategies for women in tech cyber security tech and also for under underrepresented groups and then of course we give back to the recommendations to cyber hygiene this covers everybody that uses the internet which is you know everybody that uses a computer across the world is 80 or 90 percent if i saw that rate not too long ago right um yeah and it's bears repeating you know that we're all hooked up to the same internet whether we realize it or not and if one of us is doing something stupid it makes us all more vulnerable sad but true yeah let's see forget what this slide is oh yeah it's very timely yeah it is we really do need these centers and um you might want to kind of talk about what they actually are so in is a bit of background here we have threats and vulnerabilities and the need for intelligence and information sharing particularly as COVID-19 pandemic has really ushered in a new era of attacks against education institutions so pre COVID-19 this is a pretty important stuff post COVID-19 it's you know been critical for example many of our education institutions are heavily involved in extraordinarily sensitive research of the life-saving nature and they've had at least three events if not breaches I can't go into the details of those but it wasn't at Michigan State had a recent issue the um UC San Francisco had one and I believe that the Louisiana and the Texas school districts respectively have all had issues whether malware ransomware you know the threat vectors and attack services are numerous well in any case what needs to happen is information sharing across educational institutions in much the same way as we see um what they call fusion centers and a fusion center it combines law enforcement intelligence with the more intelligence based information and they they they hook up to discover and look into what we would call credible threats or you know weird patterns of usage those types of things so it would involve of course um government and agency public private agencies private sector and educational institutions at all levels and yeah I do I do see a lot of I do see a lot of folks hearing about ransomware and right you know it's it's not just schools but this would be a place that we could give and share actionable threat information to education institutions and help them out right so we don't all have to solve the same problem independently over and over again when we can just share the solutions as they developed so in in for example in the state of california we have the california cyber security integration center of the call seasick and that would be an example of that they have a variety of feeds coming into coming across their stacks and they they can take a look at the general and if they noted any issues or potential concerns they would have a point of contact at all these institutions that they would be able to reach out to and that would be a perfect example of a threat assessment center or attack as it relates to the california seasick see what's on this slide now I forget I think it's the pathway slide yeah it's just pretty much uh kind of an overview of what is being done in california you have the k-12 associates degrees and certificates which actually kind of goes back down to k-12 as well because certificates are starting to be earned in the high school levels in some cases even middle school bachelor's degree and graduate programs we've got to have them uh professional certifications you know what's what I've seen is that a lot of industries are developing their own custom certifications and we haven't really talked about badging but I think that kind of falls in there as well and the big one is on the job training because everybody's industry everybody's job is going to be different they have to know the basics but each job is uh unique I I would like to spend a moment and talk about professional certifications go ahead so many of us are on a variety of social media platforms maybe facebook or linkedin or instagram I guess and uh maybe a couple of myspace folks here too you never know and I often see the question I'm interested in getting into it I'm interested in getting into cybersecurity what certifications do I need to have to get the job or what degree do I need to have I basically don't know what I'm doing I want to get into the field how do I do that and let me tell you the amount of uh discussion about a proper certification path is an example of a great service that we could do to our students and potential workforce is we need to do a better job and and this is on us these are our certifications we're talking about we need to do a better job of letting folks know how to navigate the professional certification morass and I mean that is a morass I hear from so many potential students who are afraid to take certifications because they're they have test anxiety for example so if you want to encourage people to get out and do some professional certification we as an industry need to do a better job of reducing things like test anxiety on individuals I can personally tell you the number of folks I've seen or know that have taken all of these courses A plus whatever it doesn't matter they take them to class on campus never sat for the exam ever never thought it never even intended to do so and that's that's an example yeah deep deep breathing to combat anxiety you bet you bet yeah while I was teaching cyber security in mute college one of the things I always included with tests um preparation one of the things I always found out is how few people even understood how to take a test especially multiple choice tests there are ways to increase your chances of getting a a good guess in there getting a getting it right but the main thing is not being panicked I um it is it is obviously more I would file test anxiety and these issues as under how we could be more supportive as an industry to to help people get into it you know if there are some really easy tracks and I I know some people might have the term objection to the word easy but we need to be able to appeal to folks to get into this field and we do so by by beginner introductory we were all noobs at one time and and we might be grizzled veterans now and not very patient sometimes but we really need to think of how do we get people on boarded into this field in a general sense and if we're going to rely on education programs and professional certification programs we got to find better ways to blend those education programs and professional certifications and we need to find a better way to to soft start and on board people into this field oh I totally agree and I think everybody else does too so I see I see semi-grizzled totally grizzled if you could see if you could see my you know very white beard I'm a pretty young fellow pretty pretty grizzled over here yeah I'm old and senile but yeah and this kind of goes back to you know the on-the-job training side of things that that we tend to all pay lip service to but are incredibly difficult to set up you know apprenticeships they're they're growing in popularity there's a lot of issues that people are concerned about for example some businesses still try to use them to get free labor same with the internships but in reality they serve a huge purpose in getting people trained cyber competitions are fantastic ways cyber patriots and others of getting people interested not only interested but get them actually hands-on learning in practical situations and then we have to we really have to examine the selection hiring process I can tell you there are a lot of HR groups that really don't know what a cyber security professional is they google it and they get all kinds of stuff so when they send out their job requests whatever you call them they have things in there like you know has to be a Microsoft certified systems engineer and maybe a CCS IP and god knows what else and they want to pay the person $11 an hour yeah I see that all the time they want 15 years experience you have to have a CISSP top secret or secret clearance starting wage $11.25 an hour yeah I see that one they have they have a home network router and a Xerox printer a a a a length of a length of job descriptions like three paragraphs long and what they're really looking for is a cyber technician to work in a sock installing firewalls and switching out motherboards right but right but I really want to address number one bullet point one related to apprenticeships so we've already we already know that anything in the tech field to have a hands-on component so we are not talking about education programs anymore we are talking about ways of various ways of workforce training so you've done well in school you've done well in your classes you're you're you're graduating there's no more school to go to right can't go to graduate school anymore you got to get a job at some point and so the apprenticeship model actually on boards a a employee at 60% of the journey person's wage in a particular occupation so for many of the cyber analysts and some of those types of positions we're talking about they have a starting wage of about $50 an hour or about $100,000 a year so that that's starting mind you $50 an hour that's that's that's you getting the foot in the door so the apprenticeships would be set at about 60% of just call it it's like 5106 we'll call it $50 because we're not math majors that about $30 an hour is what you would pay an apprentice when they got on with the company and they would have a 2000 hour or one year equivalency of work experience and they can be flexible like if they were still a student they could work part-time over the school year and full-time over the summer or just or just do like 11 straight months of work I mean whatever the details are and they are making 30 bucks an hour 40 hours a week at full-time rate and I ask faculty when I'm talking to them how many would take a $30 an hour part-time job and every hand in the room including mine is up so so this these are solid occupations I don't know if you could support a family a big family and an expensive part of the country and you live high on the hog but $30 an hour starting wage is you know that's going to be able to pay the bills in most parts of the country at the world and in any case you have a 2000 hour OJT and then of course you are off to the races so you have your degree or certificate because apprenticeships can be linked to any kind of education program anything over 155 hours four courses I believe after about four academic courses a student could get into an apprenticeship track two-year degree four-year degree whatever doesn't really matter there hybrid students I like that yes there are hybrid students those that are working part-time and those that are going to school full-time I'm a I'm a professor the average student today in 2020 is taking 80 18 units and working about 28 hours a week so yeah that's a pretty high that's that that's a tough that's a tough lift right there for the typical student of whom they are graduating about $40,000 in student debt which is a fairly significant amount of money they're going to need this workforce development and these opportunities to be able to pay that kind of money and that was sumo you bet that that that is a tough lift I don't fall 2020 is obviously a different semester so I don't know what it you know it might change right now because of the COVID-19 thing but but before in early spring of 2020 that was 18 and 28 respectively easy numbers to remember you're killing me sumo we are wanting people to encourage the field we we want to encourage and support folks into the field we we understand the limitations and the challenges and I think that's one of the things that we can do on the front end to let candidates know these kinds of things early in the process so that when we get folks into the profession they they stay in the profession and that they knew what they were going to get we we manage expectations as as students and as workers all along the process and and I think that's that you know what interesting thing I'm talking I see Vic and those comments coming up one of the interesting things I think with that lift there are plenty of folks that actually don't think that 2000 hour or one year apprenticeship workforce is enough especially in a variety of the more specialized technical fields and for our friends in Europe I think 2000 hour OJT would be would be considered woefully inadequate I'm sure that most of them are thinking between four years of increasing levels of responsibility for they you know going the workforce as actual folks I see the slide I sort of much a overview again yes I'm I was just responding to Shiloh so the difference between an apprenticeship and a lengthier commitment of time is a internship and internships typically are very temporary in nature and can be as few as I don't know maybe I've seen about 120 hour internships all the way up to well hundreds of hours internships I think in in in some of the health fields for example they rely and in education for example they rely on like 400 to 600 hours of of in essence internship experience and sumo brings up a good point that you know apprenticeships are more culturally acceptable in some nations than they are on others and they'll they'll have to find some way to counter that or adjust for it but at least in the USA it's something that has a long history I'm locked and loaded on that question right there when when I get that I get the the initial reservation for the apprenticeship model and key limitation is finding employers to support the students right and apprenticeship needs a link to a employer and a specific job and so what's happening I believe and this is this is Keith Clement's opinion here I do please presume this to be recorded it is my view that as the return of investment or ROI of apprenticeship workforce opportunities become more and more viable and attractive to employers that are losing their competitive advantage due to significant workforce capabilities and skilled gaps they are they are seeing what other employers in the space and ecosystem are doing and they are relying on what we would consider alternative workforce training models of which internships and apprenticeships would be both considered examples of the third also viable workforce strategy I hear a lot for or from coming out of industry is incumbent based workforce training where they already have somebody at the company doing stuff but they want to bring them they want to upskill them reskill them or begin to skill them up into IT and cybersecurity because for example they might have plenty of folks in the factory or too many people in accounting or that that HR is just too many and they they move them around they move them into IT and they move them into security specifically so of the IT sector about one eighth of all jobs are currently found in the security components and that number is going up significantly every year and I would not be surprised if that number goes up a percentage or two a year significant growth is obviously what I'm talking about and that's empirical I don't have the numbers in front of me but one could easily find those numbers as I have in the past yeah and we have contracted in California and they supply a lot of education opportunities for current workers to upskill and many corporations actually get a tax break on that but one of the things that kind of was hinted at in the chat was that a lot of the companies are constantly headhunting and the problem with that and many of them are starting to moan about it is the fact that in order to get somebody with the skills you need who's working at another company to come to your company you have to offer them more and it's great for the employee they actually get to cycle up and you know become more and more affluent but it's just hell on the country down the companies themselves um reaching a point where they can't afford it so you know I hear a lot of things from industry and one concern is that they don't really want to pay the education costs of their potential employees and they don't really want to pay the workforce costs of on the job training either but I think that the company has come to the conclusion they're going to have to pay for it one way or the other so do they dump their money into the education side right solid skill based programs that are linked to their needs as employers or are they going to go and that's a little bit more altruistic right because you know you're you're dumping money in a first and second grade and up education and you there's no guarantee that those first and second graders in 20 years are going to be working for your company so they've taken I think a less altruistic route at least in that sense and what they are instead doing is they have agreed to settle on the the the payment of wages salaries and related to onboarding of apprentice or apprentice like candidates whether they're interns or like an engineer they do a lot of co-op stuff for example and that they are willing to onboard increasingly these alternate workforce development models like apprenticeship I think that it's important that to develop a apprenticeship center at the state level you need to work with the government and you need to work with the private employers and also educational institutions and this is bolstered by the education clearinghouse that we already spoke about a bit ago and I think that what I find to be most interesting is this idea of a roadmap and we spoke about this earlier in the context of a career guidance counselor and having students drop by their office it might not be familiar with how to get IT jobs and cyber jobs and the guidance counselor might not have the direct information either instead they pull up these education workforce development maps that lay it out step by step step by step step by step right well thank you for joining us Keith this has been a lot of fun we could go on for hours and hours we kind of reach the end of our hour here I'll be happy to hang around and discuss even more but obviously it's a lot more complex and a lot of moving parts than people realize but getting these courses into the schools and getting these pathways developed is something that's absolutely necessary and I really commend you on the work you've done you've been a rock star and pretty much held the task force together keeping us focused on getting these things developed and I really appreciate it thank you thank you very much I appreciate everybody's time today this morning