The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has announced it is now accepting nominations for its first cohort of Cyber Innovation Fellows, with an applications due date of July 8.
The new cohort is expected to come from the private sector, and will focus on lending their expertise to CISA’s technical teams in various cybersecurity roles including threat hunting, incident response, and vulnerability management.
CISA Director Jen Easterly said she’s looking forward to the new cohort and the capabilities and the capabilities that the new fellows will bring to help CISA.
“I couldn’t be more excited to launch our new Cyber Innovation Fellows initiative,” she said. “This new effort will allow us to partner even more closely with top talent from the private sector as they become part of our team for a few days each month to help us tackle some of the most complex cybersecurity challenges we face as a nation.”
The new cohort will be a part of the CISA team on a part-time basis for four months, and will total eight new participants expected to start in their new roles in Fall 2022.
The agency said creation of the Cyber Innovation Fellows program “marks an important milestone in CISA’s engagement with a broader community of experts whose training and expertise, creativity around solutions, and desire to make a difference in improving global cybersecurity will make for dynamic, additive, and valuable contributions within the CISA mission space.”
CISA said it’s looking for people with several years of experience in key focus areas including cloud security, AI/ML, and secure software development.
“Fellows will help design, through consultation, the implementation of CISA’s cybersecurity programs and services, as well as to strategies to scale new approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, post-compromise containment, initiative evaluation and analysis, cloud security, in addition to CISA’s legacy initiatives supporting federal cybersecurity,” the agency said.
