Page 32 - Cybersecurity Career Guide for UT Austin

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Apprenticeships:
Mentorship Plus a Paycheck
With elements of blue-collar and white-collar work, cybersecurity profession-
als are often classified as “new collar.” Many jobs in the industry call for
skills learned outside a degree program. Advancement, however, generally de-
mands education, too. That’s where cybersecurity apprenticeships come in. Struc-
tured to take you from raw talent to becoming a skilled and educated professional,
these programs are designed to be paired with coursework in both two-year and
four-year degree programs. Even better: You may well end up with your employer
paying for your
higher education.
While internships
can be valuable, they
are part-time or
short-term and offer
low or no pay. Ap-
prenticeships are
full-time jobs in
which you are paid
a salary as you gain
skills. Unlike intern-
ships, apprentice-
ships are not left to
employers to design.
Rather, they are reg-
ulated by the De-
partment of Labor
and must include mentorship by a professional at the journeyman level, on-the-job
training at no less than 60 percent of the standard wage for the job, and related
tech instruction (though you may be responsible for tuition for such instruction).
Another advantage to apprenticeships is the opportunity to test your skills.
Observes Craig Koroscil, senior executive at Circadence, “It’s okay to fail now —
once you start work, it may not be.”
Just as with cyber camps or other programs, make sure the apprenticeship states
the learning objectives in specific terms and outlines the measures of performance,
together with any certifications earned. Start by searching online for apprentice-
ships registered with Department of Labor. You can also check the NICE Cybersecu-
rity Apprenticeship Program website (https://www.nist.gov/nice/apprentice-
ship-finder) to search in your location and to align the opportunity with the
credentials you want for your future. Some community colleges and universities
have partnerships with reputable employers, so check in your region for those, too.
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; PHOTOS COURTESY THE SCHOOLS
may help you design better, user-friendly
systems. Law enforcement is fundamen-
tal to issues of evidence for prosecuting
cybercrime. And the increasingly thorny
public policy questions of who should
have access to information and how we
can protect individual privacy won’t be
settled with coding. There are business
management courses for the tools to
manage teams, projects, and your own
cybersecurity company.
Most cyber programs accommodate
coursework outside of tech. New York
Institute of Technology’s B.S. in Informa-
tion Technology, for instance, allows
students to customize the program with
several electives. Sarah Basset Lee, di-
rector of the School of Computing Sci-
ences and Computer Engineering at the
University of Southern Mississippi, also
recommends jumping at any opportunity
to foster communication skills. “Even
if you’re going down a technical path,
you’re going to have do some writing. I’d
colleges and universities
University of Maryland,
Baltimore County