In August of 2020, we got together with our friends from the INL for a brainstorming session at ESTEC in Pocatello. We asked ourselves, “What could we do together, that would help us get participation and raise visibility for industrial cybersecurity education?”
We decided to launch a virtual workshop — low cost — low risk — high potential payoff. We invited some great people in government and academia, and held a day-long workshop. Over 100 people attended.
To keep the momentum going, we decided to name it the “Industrial Cybersecurity Workforce Development Community of Practice” or ICSCOP for short. We divided into subgroups. We held monthly meetings. We did additional workshops in May and November 2021. Participants from all over the country have attended the meetings. ISA has been a strong supporter. NIST NICE leadership has also been a significant collaborator as they try to add ICS coverage into the NICE framework. Based on joint interests, Ida Ngambeki of Purdue and I wrote a paper together for the CISSE conference.
We are excited about the future. Check out this great article about the ICSCOP that ran in the NICE winter e-newsletter: https://www.nist.gov/itl/applied-cybersecurity/nice/nice-enewsletter-winter-2021-22-government-spotlight.