Publication

This workshop was the 6th in a series of U.S. Government workshops on engineering Cyber Resilient Weapon Systems (CRWS). The objective of this workshop as to develop a roadmap for education and training of the today’s and tomorrow’s engineering workforce in response to challenges presented by cyberspace. This workshop was hosted by the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) in order to engage across the government, academia, and industrial communities to leverage their combined interest and expertise in education and training.

The evolving and complex nature of the challenges associated with the engineering of dependable weapon systems for operation in contested cyberspace environments requires skills beyond those addressed by information technology and associated security education. The Department of Defense must develop the ability to engineer and assess the combined safety, security, and resilience in current and future weapon systems in the presence of determined cyber adversaries. The general goal of this workshop was to start the process of identifying skill sets and curriculum needs for the future defense government and contractor workforce. Specific goals of the workshop were to:

• Understand engineering education gaps related to cybersecurity
  
• Develop needs for today’s engineering workforce
• Anticipate and develop needs for tomorrow’s engineering workforce

Engineering resilient systems is viewed as a systems engineering (SE) challenge. This challenge spans all environments of operation inclusive of cyberspace, and all types of systems to include defense systems, with weapon systems comprising the specific focus of the CRWS 6 workshop. The SERC was asked to host and facilitate this workshop due to its broad relationship with engineering academia and its core mission as the primary engine for the U.S. government in SE research. The SERC mission is three-fold, to:

• Catalyze community growth among SE researchers and end users by enabling collaboration among many SE research organizations (who),
• Accelerate SE competency development through rapid transfer of its research to educators and practitioners (how),
• Transform SE practice throughout the government by creating innovative methods, processes, and tools that address critical challenges to meeting mission outcomes (what).

The collaboration in CRWS #6 between the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering (DASD(SE)) and the SERC along with industry organizations such as the National Defense Industries Association (NDIA) created a deep conversation between government, industry, and academia.