140D0424C0034

Small Technology Transfer Research Program (STTR) Phase I

Cyber Operations Preparedness and Education (COPE)

To securely build, operate, and maintain our critical cyber infrastructures and protect and defend our data, organizations across the public and private sector must employ a skilled and diverse workforce of cybersecurity professionals. The current workforce is lacking in two respects. The first deficiency is availability, and reflects insufficient quantities of appropriately trained workers. Although estimates vary, it is clear that there are hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs. These vacancies are directly responsible for increasing the vulnerability of the US cyber domain. The second dimension deficiency is quality, and is expressed as a lack of critical competencies within the employed workforce. For example, a recent survey of cybersecurity leaders reported that 50% of the respondents said their cybersecurity applicants are not well qualified. There is a clear and pressing need to create an accessible and efficacious environment in which potential cybersecurity professionals can learn the skills that that they need to keep our systems safe. To address the needs across the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the broader United States Government, and the private sector, Sonalysts will develop a scalable and efficacious training system known as Cyber Operations Readiness and Education (CORE). Transition stakeholders will benefit from CORE s use of TRL 9 closed-loop adaptive technology to create an accessible cloud-based learning environment that adapts to the needs of a diverse learner population across a dynamically refined curriculum. The performance records resulting from engagement with CORE will provide stakeholders with a comprehensive, traceable, auditable, evidence-based record of mastery that follows learners throughout their career and can be updated via on-going learning and on-the-job experiences. Further, to maximize the likelihood of transition, CORE will merge transition-ready TRL 9 solutions with lower-TRL game-changing innovations focused on maximizing scalability. CORE addresses stakeholder concerns about focusing on the right content by employing revolutionary techniques to identify and prioritize the competencies that must be mastered by cyber professionals. CORE will address stakeholder concerns about supporting a diverse workforce, addressing a wide variety of content, and providing adequate hands-on learning opportunities with high-TRL closed-loop adaptive training technology. CORE s revolutionary authoring and maintenance tools will address stakeholder concerns about the cost of maintaining a large and volatile curriculum. The community s need for a solution that is available 24/7/365 in support of a geographically diverse learner population while supporting a bring your own device access strategy that can include a variety of computing platforms, including mobile devices, will be addressed by employing a high-TRL cloud-based service-oriented architecture.

The goal of phase I is to establish the technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential of proposed R&D efforts and determine the quality of performance of the small business awardee organization. STTRs are completed in conjunction with a research institution.

CUBRC

HR0011ST2023D-03

D23D-03-0034

23.D

Tejas N Patel