Review the NICE Workforce Framework. Are there certain areas that you would want to focus your career on? Explain which areas would appeal the most to you and which would appeal the least.
The Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE Framework) is a framework that helps employers establish a common ground over all of the different sectors in cybersecurity. This framework allows all public, private, and academic sectors to gain an understanding of each role involved in cybersecurity. The framework lists seven different categories: Analyze, Collect and Operate, Investigate, Operate and Maintain, Oversee and Govern, Protect and Defend, and lastly Securely Provision.
When reviewing the NICE Workforce framework, three different categories appeal to me: Analyze, Investigate, and Protect and Defend. The Analyze category consists of many different roles related to threat analysis, which requires the ability to identify the capabilities of cyber criminals. I would be interested in finding some sort of threat or targets role because it is closely related to counterintelligence activities. The Investigate category has speciality areas in digital forensics and different cyber investigation roles such as a cyber crime investigator. I have always been drawn to investigating things, whether it is cyber or not, so this area appeals to me immensely. The Investigate category is also closely related to the Analysis category because being able to closely analyze information is a necessary skill in both categories. The Protect and Defend category has speciality areas such as Vulnerability Assessment and Management and Incident Response. Both of these areas examine and respond to potential threats a system or organization might be facing and try to figure out the best way to mitigate them. Being able to mitigate threats and help defend a system is a role that I have also had interest in.
The category that appeals the least to me is Oversee and Govern. This category provides legal advice and is involved with policy making and planning. While I understand that this plays a crucial role in cybersecurity, it is not something that I see myself pursuing for my career. Policy changing requires a lot of agreement amongst many domains and I would much rather be working as an investigator or analyst.
After closely examining all of the seven categories of the NICE Framework, I noticed that there are many roles that I would love to explore. I feel that pursuing any of the three categories that I discussed earlier would be very enjoyable and successful for myself.