The Changing Role of Security Leaders – Valuable Q&As
The Changing Role of Security Leaders – Valuable Q&As
Answering your questions about how to hire, develop, and retain cyber talent.
We had an excellent turnout for our latest webinar, The Changing Role of Security Leaders: How to Hire, Develop & Retain Talent for a World-Class Security Team. Cloud Range Founder and CEO Debbie Gordon discussed how security leaders can:
Use assessments to make better hiring decisions
Accelerate new employee’s time to value
Plan and track employees’ skill development
Design learning plans that create career paths and optimize retention
Check out an overview of the webinar in this blog post.
We received some great questions during the webinar and wanted to share the answers with everyone responsible for hiring, retaining, and managing cyber talent at their organizations.
How are cyber aptitude assessments utilized?
Cloud Range RightTrak Cyber Aptitude Assessments look at a person’s innate cognitive capabilities, evaluating pattern recognition, creative thinking, problem-solving, and more. Those are then analyzed through the perspective of cybersecurity. The result is an understanding of how well-suited the person is in the 4 main areas of cybersecurity:
Offense (red team)
Defense (blue team)
Analysis and forensics
Development/design
The assessment is accessible online through Cloud Range’s Performance Portal. Once an assessment is complete, the results can be accessed through the same link, and the final report is emailed as a PDF.
How accurate are the results of the assessments?
RightTrak Cyber Aptitude Assessments were field tested with the United States Air Force and found to be 97% accurate in predicting the potential for individuals to succeed in a given role. The assessment’s metric-based results can help you align individuals to appropriate roles.
There will be 3.5 million cybersecurity job openings by 2025. Aligning employees to the appropriate career paths can help lower turnover and increase retention. As cybersecurity leaders worldwide take on more responsibility for talent acquisition, development, and retention, tools like RightTrak Cyber Aptitude Assessments make matching an individual to a role faster, easier, and more accurate. It also helps you build out learning paths for continued development and advancement.
Similarly, the results of FastTrak Candidate Assessments are highly accurate because they are directly mapped to the KSAs for the role as outlined in the NICE Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity. Additional skills and abilities can be incorporated into FastTrak Assessments according to your organization’s requirements.
Is the cyber range able to simulate digital forensics investigations?
Absolutely. Cloud Range has created multiple scenarios for teams to practice and train on the cyber range. Our expert team can also create new scenarios as needed based on your organization’s needs. Scenarios are designed for different kinds of teams including security operations, incident response, digital forensics investigations, operational technology (OT), and more.
Are custom learning plans an option?
Yes. By default, Cloud Range’s Performance Portal uses learning paths based on the NICE Workforce for Cybersecurity Framework. But not every role matches the NICE Framework, so Cloud Range has developed a proprietary system that allows custom learning plans to be created for specific roles.
There are over 1,500 lab exercises for individual skills training in addition to the team simulation training to ensure your whole team is constantly improving and set up for success.
Can you see learning plan progress?
Yes. The learning plans in Cloud Range’s Performance Portal allow you to see what people have done and how an employee’s performance compares to the expected performance for their role. You can also see how a user is progressing regarding other learning paths they are associated with, such as for future roles or certification preparation.
Progress and result metrics are easy to understand and ready to be shared with upper-level management or board members, allowing you to effectively communicate team readiness and risk reduction.
Cloud Range is launching a new version of the Performance Portal in 2023, and it will feature additional detailed and customizable reporting options out of the box.
If you’d like to learn more about how Cloud Range's cyber range solutions can help you hire, minimize risk, and communicate value internally, contact us!