December News from the Virginia Cyber Range

VISIT US AT #2020NICEK12 VIRTUAL

The 2020 NICE K12 Cybersecurity Education Conference is a fully virtual event that features timely and thought-provoking presentations that highlight effective collaborations, bold experiments and innovations, and other potentially game-changing methods in support of growing the cybersecurity workforce through K12 education.

We'll be exhibiting at this year's conference. If you are planning to attend, stop by our virtual booth. We are also hosting the conference Capture the Flag event!

COURSEWARE NEWS

NEW MODULES AVAILABLE

Two new modules are now available for the Introduction To The Command Line Interface course.

Installing Software. The purpose of this module is to introduce students to the basics of installing software on a Linux system.
Secure Shell (SSH). The purpose of this module is to introduce students to the basics of using Secure Shell (SSH) for secure remote connections to a Linux server.

The addition of these two modules completes the Introduction To The Command Line Interface course. Be sure to check out all ten modules - the goal of the course is to provide students with an introduction to the Linux operating system command line interface (CLI). Each module includes several hands-on lab exercises that allows students to practice navigating around the CLI and use Linux commands. These can all be completed in the Cyber Range virtual environment.

Virginia Cyber Range instructors - be on the lookout for a survey email from the courseware team. The Courseware survey should only take a few minutes to complete. Your responses will help to improve the Range in the future for you and other faculty!

CYBER RANGE SPOTLIGHT
K-12 ADVISORY BOARD

We recently held a call for nominations and vote for our K-12 Advisory Board representatives. This month’s spotlight recognizes the educators in those positions:

Chair: Jen Marden (Loudoun County)
Vice Chair: Kristi Rice (Spotsylvania County)
Secretary: Ellen Frey (Loudoun County)
Region 1- Central VA: Peyton Chichester (Chesterfield County)
Region 2- Tidewater: Erik Breede (Hampton City)
Region 3- Northern Neck: Kristi Rice (Spotsylvania County)
Region 4- Northern VA: Eileen Fox (Fairfax County), Natalie Walden (Prince William County)
Region 5- Valley: Geoffray Estes (Harrisonburg City)
Region 6- Western VA: Jay Mathis (Montgomery County)
Region 7- Southwest: Howie Fuller (Buchanan County)

More information on the K-12 advisory board can be found here on the Virginia Cyber Range website.

NEW NICE FRAMEWORK RELEASED

The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) has released the first revision to the Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE Framework). The NICE Framework improves communications about how to identify, recruit, develop, and retain cybersecurity talent – offering a common, consistent lexicon that categorizes and describes cybersecurity work.

Revisions to the NICE Framework (NIST Special Publication 800-181) include:

A streamlined set of “building blocks” comprised of Task, Knowledge, and Skill Statements
The introduction of Competencies as a mechanism for organizations to assess learners
A reference to artifacts, such as Work Roles and Task, Knowledge, and Skills statements, that will live outside of the publication to enable a more fluid update process

Read More About the New NICE Framework.

PILOT TESTERS WANTED!

Teach Cyber is opening up 20 seats for pilot testers for the spring of 2021! They're looking for high school teachers who teach dedicated cybersecurity courses and who can implement the majority of the Teach Cyber course. The goal of pilot testing is to solicit meaningful feedback so that they can further improve the course.

Selected applicants have the option to attend lab help sessions throughout the semester.

Teach Cyber estimates it will take between 12-16 hours of orientation and onboarding time to prepare to teach the Teach Cyber course, depending on your past cybersecurity teaching experience.

Interested in applying to become a pilot tester? The application can be found here. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. The application due date is midnight, December 10th.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Shannon Beck at shannon.beck@teachcyber.org.

NATIONAL CYBERSECURITY CAREER AWARENESS WEEK CTF RECAP

In case you missed last month's Cybersecurity Careers Capture the Flag event, check out the recorded webinar and slides on our resources page.

Webinar Recording - Learn how to approach different types of CTF challenges and the tools you can use to solve them in this hands-on workshop recording.
Workshop Slides - Lots of great tips on CTF challenges and competitions included here!
CTF Write-up - Were you stumped by a challenge? Check out this write-up detailing step-by-step solutions and answers for every challenge.

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