Cyber Springboard

At CISSE UK’s 2022 Cyber Education Conference on “Networking the Cyber Education Ecosystem” at the University of Roehampton, I was delighted to launch Cyber Springboard.

Cyber Springboard is a learning platform to help stimulate curiosity as you build and evidence the knowledge, skills and judgement required to help gain employment in cyber security.

Motivation

During my time in industry working at Roke as the Head of Profession for Cyber & Networks, I’d noticed a common question arising from school leavers, apprentices, undergraduates, postgraduates and mid-career changers:

“What can I do to build the skills and knowledge necessary to work in cyber security?”

Often, that question would be expressed with particular cyber careers in mind. Typically, pen testing or digital forensics. While both offer interesting career pathways, the cyber career domain is so much broader than these pathways alone.

I wanted to be able to quickly recommend somewhere for people to start a journey, building or augmenting their toolbox of knowledge, skills and experience.

Concept

Cyber Springboard started life as a physical deck of cards. Each card suggested a single activity, and most activities built on existing openly available material. Although I love the physical card format, moving Cyber Springboard online widens accessibility whilst enriching the activity itself. It’s easier to include links to existing material and the use of tags (including the CyBOK KAs) allows someone to quickly navigate between activities.

Much like picking from a deck of cards, if you’re not sure what to do today, Cyber Springboard provides a suggestion of the day, which can be accessed from the homepage. You can also subscribe for free to receive a daily suggestion by email.

Alignment to CyBOK

The Cyber Security Body of Knowledge (CyBOK) has 21 separate Knowledge Areas (KAs). Cyber Springboard tags activities with relevant KAs. This allows users to focus on areas of interest, easily explore areas they are less familiar with, and understand where their interests and strengths lie.

Next Steps

Over the next year, I’m looking to build out the structure, functionality and community around the site to provide a richer learning platform that remains fun and simple to use.

If you find Cyber Springboard useful or interesting please share it with others. If you have feedback, would like to hear more, or collaborate, please get in touch with me at hello@cyberspringboard.com.

Footnotes

CISSE UK is a national, outcomes focused, cyber education community of practitioners, educators, students, graduates and career changers. CISSE UK works to establish a culture of outstanding, innovative and state-of-the-art cyber education in the UK.

Cyber Security Body of Knowledge (CyBOK) is a comprehensive Body of Knowledge to inform and underpin education and professional training for the cyber security sector. The CyBOK project aims to bring cyber security into line with the more established sciences by distilling knowledge from major internationally-recognised experts to form a Cyber Security Body of Knowledge that will provide much-needed foundations for this emerging topic. The project, funded by the National Cyber Security Programme, is led by the University of Bristol’s Professor Awais Rashid, along with other leading cyber security experts - including Professor Andrew Martin, Professor Steve Schneider, Dr Yulia Cherdantseva, Dr Rod Chapman and Dr Marina Krotofil.