S 3088 Introduced – Veterans Cybersecurity Training

Last month Sen. Duckworth (D,IL) introduced S 3088, the Energy Jobs for Our Heroes Act of 2018. The bill would require the Secretary of Energy to establish a training program under the DOD SkillBridge program to provide for transitioning military personnel to obtain jobs in the energy sector. Cybersecurity is one of the job categories included in the required program.

The Program

The bill would add a new §1107 to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It would require the Secretary, in cooperation with DOD, to “provide standardized training courses, based, to the maximum extent practicable, on existing industry-recognized certification and training programs, to prepare eligible participants in the program for careers in the energy industry” {new section 1107(d)}. The training courses would prepare eligible military members for careers in the solar energy industry, the wind energy industry, other low/zero carbon emission energy sectors, energy infrastructure planning, construction or maintenance or the cybersecurity sector of the energy industry.

The cybersecurity jobs would include (new §1107(d)(1)(C)}:

• Cybersecurity preparedness;

• Cyber incident response and recovery;

• Grid modernization, security, and maintenance;

• Resilience planning; and

• Other areas relating to the cybersecurity sector of the energy industry

The bill would authorize the appropriations of “such sums as are necessary to carry out this section” {§1107(g)}.

Moving Forward

Duckworth is a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that she may have sufficient influence to see the bill considered in Committee. The bipartisan support of her two co-sponsors {Sen. Graham (R,SC) and Sen. Bennet (D,CO)} would seem to indicate that there would be broad support for the legislation were it to make it to the floor of the Senate.

The major problem with this bill moving forward (excepting, of course, the crowded and politically charged calendar) is that it authorizes a vague amount of spending.

Commentary

This bill performs two important functions. First it helps to provide an expanding cybersecurity workforce for the energy sector. Second it helps to provide realistic job training for personnel departing the military.

The interesting thing about this bill is that it requires the training program to work through the existing DOD SkillBridge program. Since this program is operated on a facility by facility basis rather than DOD wide, it would allow the Energy Department to focus their cybersecurity training efforts on facilities with large populations of cyberwarriors. This would allow the training programs to rely on a high existing-cybersecurity knowledge base and concentrate the training on energy specific tasks associated with control system technologies. This would help reduce the costs of the training program without reducing the level of exit-skills.

The only problem with tying this training program to a specific DOD transition program is that DOD has a long history of birthing and killing these programs on almost a whim. These programs are frequently killed off as new ideas come along with changes of command and new programs get developed to take their place. This problem could be easily corrected by adding the phrase “or such successor programs as are developed by DOD,” after ‘Department of Defense,’ in §1107(d)(1) [pg 3, line 24].