Agencies Push for AI-Enabled Cyber Workforce to Counter Threats

Agencies need to build a cybersecurity workforce that leverages AI to defend against a new generation of attacks, IT officials said during the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C. Tuesday. State Department and Pentagon officials said that government needs to focus on strategic AI adoption, AI skills-based approaches to hiring and a cultural shift toward continuous learning to build the future of the cyber workforce.

“AI won’t take my job, but someone who’s really good at AI will take all of our jobs, right?” State CIO Kelly Fletcher said Tuesday. “Humans partnered with AI are going to be infinitely powerful. And I will also say the folks who are using AI are having more fun than the folks who aren’t.”

Fletcher added that the path to a more resilient cyber defense begins with a willingness to experiment. She said that AI can close the skills gap for the security workforce by alleviating the “administrative toil” and free up talent for high-value tasks.

Principal Director for Resources and Analysis at the War Department’s CIO Office Mark Gorak added that finding the best uses for AI in automation is critical to augmenting the cybersecurity workforce throughout government. Too many leaders, he said, want to bring AI in when it is not necessary.

“We have to look at what capability you want to deliver,” Gorak said. “Is AI even the right solution for automation in general? Let’s start with that.”

A Needed Cultural Shift

Fletcher said that tools are not the only solution to building a future cyber workforce. The culture of agencies needs to shift. She advocated for a “parallel ops” model, where new AI security applications are tested alongside existing systems.

“When Starlink came out, some very enterprising diplomatic technology officers overseas said, ‘I want to get one of these, and I want to play with it. I want to see what it can do,’” Fletcher said. “We kept [old systems along with the new ones being tested]. We also have radios. We have a ton of redundant comps. We didn’t touch any of those, but we spent a little time and a little money to learn about this new technology. And what we found is it worked great.”

Fletcher added that this experimentation allows for a “fail fast” approach, enabling State to quickly learn what works and what doesn’t without risking mission-critical infrastructure.

She also noted that State’s generative AI chatbot was initially met with apprehension. Changing the culture around AI bots and other tech requires transparent communication and a clear demonstration that the technology is designed to augment human capabilities.

“It took us a ton of education and engagement,” Fletcher said. “I recently answered the question, ‘Is it allowable to use this? It feels like cheating.’ Yeah, it does.”

Hiring in the AI Age

Gorak said that AI is shifting the way DOW hires cybersecurity workers. He noted that applicants use AI to write their resumes, and he uses AI to adjudicate the resumes.

“Just last week, I announced an open position. Within three days, I had 130 applicants.” he said. “I’m not reading 130 resumes. I will throw all that in AI, give it my criteria, and tell me to give me the 50 best ones.”

Similarly, he said that AI will fundamentally shift hiring from a resume-based process to one of skills-based assessment, saying that he would “throw them into a cyber range and see what capabilities they can actually deliver.”

AI can write a resume, he said, but the actual skills needed for cybersecurity jobs are more complicated. Hiring and training requires the human skills at agencies, he said.

“I’ll take any person out there who has the aptitude and the attitude to be able to do my job, and I’ll teach them the technical phases,” Gorak said. “We have those skills, most of the soft skills, the professional skills we want. How then do we use the technology to get them up to speed faster?”

The White House Wants to Build a Patriotic Cybersecurity Workforce

White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said Tuesday at Billington that agencies need to invest in America’s cybersecurity workforce, calling it a “national strategic asset.” He advocated for a pragmatic and accessible pipeline that draws from academia, vocational schools, corporations and venture capital to recruit and train talent.

“Industry, academia, government and military must eliminate roadblocks and align incentives,” he said.

Caincross pointed to advancements in AI, quantum computing and emerging technologies as ways for the U.S. to buttress the cybersecurity workforce.

“If we, as a country, can align incentives where innovation and security meet, these technologies have the potential to accelerate our ability to secure and defend our nation,” Cairncross said.

Finding the correct balance of the correct kind of AI and the correct education is critical to building an AI-human workforce for American cybersecurity, Fletcher added. That way, security professionals can do the necessary human work to protect American assets, she said.

“What we say at State is ‘less face to screen, more, face to face,’” she said. “[AI tools can] free up people’s time to do work that only humans can do, like going out into the community, meeting people from whatever country we’re in and engaging with them.”