CISA Recruits 100 Cyber Interns as Agencies Embrace Agentic AI

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is recruiting 100 summer cybersecurity interns through a federal scholarship program as the agency prepares its workforce for AI-powered cybersecurity operations, CISA CIO Robert Costello said Friday at GovCIO Media & Research’s AI Summit in Tysons, Virginia.

The effort is part of the Office of Personnel Management’s CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program to recruit top cybersecurity talent to government. The internships will provide hands-on experience and pathways to federal IT positions after graduation.

“What we’re seeing is a change in what is required to be successful at certain jobs when you’re the human in the loop,” Costello said at the summit. “We do expect some level of proficiency with using AI, and I think we’re seeing that dramatic change in our cyber operations.”

Costello said workforce development is critical to ensuring a prepared workforce for agencies ramping up technology modernization efforts and implementing AI.

“We’re putting a significant amount of effort into retraining people and providing them with the resources so that they understand how to operate in a new environment,” said Costello.

Empowering the Workforce with Agentic AI

Agentic AI systems are growing in popularity across government because they can take autonomous actions based on their analysis, unlike traditional AI tools that only provide recommendations.

IBM Vice President and Senior Partner Mike Chon said agentic AI doesn’t do everything for its user, but it does take its own actions and prompts an employee to act if it detects anomalies.

“I think with that cultural evolution you start to gain trust as [agentic AI] starts to help augment. You gain that trust, and then you start to let it do the job it needs to do, and it does become a great force multiplier,” said Chon.

Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) CIO Adarryl Roberts echoed that and added that his agency sees agentic AI as a capability enhancer because of its ability to analyze large datasets and predict where a problem might occur. Roberts said this process along with the agency’s AI governance framework allows DLA to be more proactive.

“We’re building ‘control towers’ to continuously monitor data across each of our nine supply chains where the AI will notify us if a company is on the verge of bankruptcy and offer suggestions for us to shift,” said Roberts.

Adopting AI — especially autonomous and agentic AI systems — has unlocked new opportunities for its workforce within the agency to act as a digital assistant and enhance employee performance.

“We’ve implemented required training, but the reskilling, the upskilling of the workforce, is a major hurdle for us that we’re attacking now,” said Roberts. “Outside of the CIO office, we don’t have a lot of technical folks, so our challenge is getting our general workforce to understand how to prompt AI for the right answers.”