NAF, a national non-profit organization, announced a new partnership with CYBER.ORG, a cybersecurity workforce development organization funded by Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cybersecurity Education and Training Assistance Program (CETAP) grant.

CYBER.ORG targets K-12 students with cyber career awareness and curricular resources, focusing on training educators to integrate cybersecurity curriculum into the classroom.

With the field of cybersecurity constantly evolving and cybersecurity curricula frequently requiring updating, this partnership aims to help solve this problem.

NAF will provide access to CYBER.ORG’s high-quality curricula and resources for IT and STEM-related academies. NAF educators and students can access CYBER.ORG’s learning content through the organization’s curricula site or this link on NAF’s website. All of CYBER.ORG’s courses are also approved in NAFTrack.

By partnering, NAF and CYBER.ORG will accomplish the following:

• Curate semester and/or annual cybersecurity courses, acting as an approved program of study and aligned to national standards
• Provide access to short-term learning modules that can be embedded into student projects
• Establish professional learning opportunities for educators
• Create student-authentic learning projects – e.g., Passport Expeditions, national student competitions/challenges

Cybersecurity as a high school curricular offering was relatively unknown five years ago. However, as the threats to data and information systems across the globe have become common, there is a growing drive from both the public and private sectors to ramp up courses in the 9-12 space – with cybersecurity being an area that is essential in every industry.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of information security analysts is projected to grow at a rapid rate of 33% from 2020 to 2030, with about 16,300 openings for information security analysts expected each year.

The work environments tend to be computer companies, consulting firms, or business and financial companies, with a median annual wage of around $102,600 as of May 2021.