Government entities acting independently will be unable to successfully raise public awareness of cybersecurity issues or develop a cybersecurity workforce, said speakers Sept. 21 at a National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education workshop. Public-private partnerships are the only appropriate vehicle for addressing the nation's daunting, multi-stakeholder cybersecurity issues, they said.

"Everybody owns this issue. We have to work together," said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, which is best known for the "Stop. Think. Connect." campaign.

Private companies, government agencies and schools, are just some of the players already spending enormous resources to secure their networks and build cybersecurity talent.

"There are people willing to make investments...to solve this problem for themselves and others," said Kaiser, while speaking at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md.  "However no one can foot the whole bill and we're much better off if we reduce the duplicative efforts and form a consolidated strategy."

Some of the most innovative cybersecurity initiatives are partnerships taking root at the local level, said Kaiser. Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Kristin Judge, director of the Washtenaw County Cyber Citizen Coalition, or WC4, began a task force for cyber education when three students in her community were targeted online by sexual predators.

The numerous educational events organized by WC4 are only possible because "all the right players were already in the room," said Judge. The early partnerships WC4 forged with federal and state agencies, schools, local non-profits and corporations, have been critical to the group's success.

WC4 hosts in-school programs around online safety as well as events and workshops to introduce students to cybersecurity as a possible career path. A recent grant from the National Security Agency will allow the organization to host a STEM-focused week-long boot camp at minority schools in Detroit and a similar boot camp tailored to ninth-grade girls.

Workshop attendees shared strategies for engaging students in computer science. "We would not have STEM as an issue if students saw engineering as an exciting and inspiring field to join," noted one attendee who identified himself as a former high school teacher.

"Tell a student that a field will be fun, [and] it damn well better be--pardon the language--because they have a BS meter that can smell that out in a heartbeat. They'll say my older brother or dad does that and they're not fun people."

Another attendee suggested organizers try to "tap into that underlying desire to protect and defend their community, their school and their friends," much in the same way first responders and military careers are encouraged.  

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