Indiana invests in statewide cybersecurity pathway

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Indiana is expanding cybersecurity pathways for high school students this fall through a statewide initiative with partners including College Board, Ivy Tech Community College, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce Defense Council, and Project Lead the Way, an Indiana-based nonprofit STEM curriculum provider.
The initiative will build an academic pathway from Advanced Placement Cybersecurity and Project Lead The Way cybersecurity courses offered in high schools to two- and four-year colleges, the Indiana National Guard and other employers, according to the Indiana Department of Education.
The Indiana National Guard has flagged cybersecurity education as a priority for homeland protection, Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education, said. Cybersecurity coursework is currently offered in 69 high schools around the state, with plans to expand to 200 over the next three years.

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Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education, said the state has been talking about how to prepare students to both work in the cybersecurity field and know how to better protect themselves and others from cyber threats.
“There’s daily conversation about how to make sure we are as ready as possible and continuing our preparation for potential cybersecurity threats,” she said. “That has hit home for Indiana, and that has hit home for our national security. … It hits home in the education sector.”
The state recently faced cybersecurity breaches when data was allegedly stolen from a couple of major education-related vendors that had contracts in the state, Jenner said.
“It’s all very real,” she said. “We had been talking about it for a while.”
The Indiana initiative aims to enable students to gain practical classroom experience, college credit, work-based learning and industry-recognized credentials, according to the partners.
The College Board has spent the past five years thinking more strategically about how to link AP courses with career and technical education, which has led to conversations with state and local educators as well as surveys of families, and Indiana was among the first states to evince an interest, said Alyssa Chudnofsky, executive director of workforce partnerships.
The AP Cybersecurity course, she said, is among those that attempted to address the “concept of, ‘How do we provide multiple pathways for students after high school, regardless of whether they’re going to college?’”
While the College Board always has had strong partnerships in K-12 and higher education, Indiana helped the organization connect with the workforce and economic development sector as well as the military, Chudnofsky said.
Part of that will involve determining how to signal to employers that students are career ready, in the same way that the College Board has helped students prove their bona fides for college all along.
“How would a training provider or employer use a score on our exam to signal cyber-readiness?” she said. “We’re working through that with folks from the Indiana Chamber and other employer partners.”
Jenner sees the continued evolution of artificial intelligence as one promising career pathway for those with cybersecurity credentials, given that threats will become more significant and harder to discern.
“Therefore, our education and training to prepare for this advancement becomes more urgent,” she said. “We are hearing from the military and hearing from our employer sectors that the need is substantial and ever-growing.”
The College Board is talking to other states that want to build similar cybersecurity pathways linking K-12, higher education and the workforce, and the agency hopes to learn from Indiana’s experience, Chudnofsky said.
“What does that ecosystem of partners need to look like? What policy conditions need to be in place for it to work?” she said.
The College Board also is thinking about how to construct other programs of study around career clusters such as personal finance or healthcare, Chudnofsky said.
“We’re focusing on industries where there are different levels of skills [needed], so students could have off and on ramps depending on whether they wanted to go into a training program or apprenticeship” or continue to a bachelor’s degree or beyond, she said.