Abstract:

Nowadays the cybersecurity field has grown exponentially, having multiple intersections with other professional and academic domains, such as law, ethics, psychology, education and national security. In this paper we examine the nexus between cybersecurity, education and national security, by aiming to configure a set of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) for the intelligence analyst that works in the cybersecurity field. In our mixed and multiple-staged research approach, we applied a qualitative content analysis and a frequency analysis methodology. In the first stage, we analysed several analytical cyber intelligence reports issued by national authorities and private companies in cyber security, intelligence and national security in order to retrieve the most relevant and frequent themes. In the second stage, we configured a set of KSAs by using the formerly retrieved cyber intelligence themes to identify relevant KSAs in the Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE framework) which was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the final stage, we compared our results with other relevant and similar cyber competence frameworks, such as the European Cybersecurity Skills Framework (ECSF). Our results showed that intelligence analysts should possess both technical as well as non-technical KSAs in order to be able to fulfil their role. Also, the retrieved set of KSAs is similar to the existing ones, but has certain differences which come from the specific attributes of the type of organization that the intelligence analyst usually works in: intelligence and national security agencies.

Keywords:

Cybersecurity, intelligence, national security, knowledge, skills, abilities.