NIST is pleased to release the draft NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NCWF) - a reference resource that will allow our nation to more effectively identify, recruit, develop and maintain its cybersecurity talent. The framework provides a common language to categorize and describe cybersecurity work that will help organizations build a strong labor staff to protect systems and data.

The NCWF can be viewed as a cybersecurity workforce dictionary that will allow employers, educators, trainers, and those in the workforce to use consistent terms to describe cybersecurity work. It can serve as a reference resource to help organizations define and share information about the cybersecurity workforce in a detailed, consistent and descriptive way. NCWF was developed by the NIST-led National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) with strong leadership from the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and is the culmination of many years of collaboration between industry, government and academia.

In addition to helping organizations educate, recruit, train and retain a qualified cybersecurity workforce, the NCWF will serve as a building block for the development of training standards, as well as for individual career planning. Federal agencies will soon be using the NCWF to identify their cybersecurity workforce as called for by the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment in the Cybersecurity Act of 2015.

The authors of the draft NIST SP 800-181 encourage readers to comment on the document, with an eye to ensuring that it applies to all cybersecurity workforce needs. Suggestions for new tasks and KSAs are encouraged so that the document will address all of our cybersecurity workforce needs.

Email comments to: ncwf@nist.gov(Subject: "Draft SP 800-181 Comments - NCWF")
Comments due by: January 6, 2017