With a bachelor’s degree in computer science, some cybersecurity work experience, and more than 20 years of US Army and National Guard service, Chris Elgee would seem perfectly positioned to easily move into a civilian cybersecurity role after his military career.
But Elgee saw challenges as he made his move. “I thought I didn’t really have the resume that showed my experience,” he says, noting that not all HR professionals, cybersecurity hiring managers, and their resume-scanning software could translate the description of his skills from military-speak to something a civilian could understand.
Elgee also felt he lacked an adequate network of private-sector contacts who could lead him to the right position at the right company. “It would have been helpful to have a veteran in cybersecurity to talk to, to say, ‘this is how to speak civilian cyber’ and to help with the transition,” he adds.
So Elgee enrolled in the SANS Veterans Cyber Academy, an intensive, accelerated training program to fill in those missing elements. He is now a pentester with Counter Hack Challenges, a certified instructor with training organization SANS, and a brigade operations officer (S3) with the Virginia National Guard.
Matching military experience with skills on the outside is key
His experience isn’t uncommon among those switching from one profession to cybersecurity. Indeed, many people struggle with articulating how prior work experience speaks to an open security role and finding mentors who can guide them in their new careers.
But Elgee and others say such challenges can be more pronounced for veterans as they transition out of the military because of its unique work and culture.
Recognizing such challenges matters, they add, explaining that organizations that seek to hire veterans would have more success recruiting and retaining them if they better understood what veterans need to succeed in their new roles as cybersecurity employees.
Moreover, veterans and veteran advocates stress that gaining such insights — and then acting upon them — will help organizations not only recruit and retain more veterans but also strengthen their recruitment and retention practices for all workers.
And that, they note, could be a boon for CISOs and their organizations as cybersecurity roles continue to outpace available talent.
Security is built into just about any military role
“Veterans make great cybersecurity specialists, because they’ve had security-focused roles, whether physical or information security — no matter what branch of the service they were in,” says Bryan Radliff, a 31-year veteran of the US Army who now serves as the CyberVets program manager in the Onward to Opportunity program for Syracuse University’s D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF).
CyberVets is a skills-to-job pathway that fast-tracks veterans into high-demand cyber careers by providing no-cost employment training, industry certifications, and career services to transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses.
Through initiatives such as Onward to Opportunity (O2O), IVMF provides free career training and professional certifications for transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses.
“Veterans have the experience, the motivation. They’ve worked on projects, they’ve led people, they’ve managed money or people or resources,” Radliff says.
“But they do have to learn to work in a new culture, and they have to learn civilian-speak,” he adds. “They’re trying to find that next so what, where do they fit in. And while a lot of companies say they’re ‘veteran-friendly,’ veterans need them to be veteran supportive, with mentors and training to help them adjust to the change of culture and show how they can bring their skill sets to the organization.”
Vets are a natural fit as cybersecurity pros
Both civilian and military leaders have long seen veterans as strong candidates for cybersecurity roles. The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies, part of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), speaks directly to veterans, saying “Your skills and training from the military translate well to a cyber career.”
NICCS continues, “Veterans’ backgrounds in managing high-pressure situations, attention to detail, and understanding of secure communications make them particularly well-suited for this career path.”
Gretchen Bliss, director of cybersecurity programs at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), speaks specifically to security execs on the matter: “If I were talking to a CISO, I’d say get your hands on a veteran. They understand the practical application piece, the operational piece, they have hands-on experience. They think things through, they know how to do diagnostics. They already know how to tackle problems.”
But like Elgee and Radliff, Bliss says many transitioning veterans need some guidance on moving into corporate America, where “the chain of command and hierarchy aren’t the same,” as well as integrating into civilian work environments that often operate in ways significantly different than the military.
But does military experience really prepare you for civvy street?
Many veterans also need guidance on framing their military experience in ways that best showcase how it will deliver for a CISO and the CISO’s team, they add.
All that is on top of the training and upskilling that many transitioning veterans require — particularly if they’re coming from military roles that were not specifically IT or cybersecurity focused.
“I know a lot of veterans who struggled when they come out because they don’t prep themselves,” says US Army veteran Jereme Hardy, a graduate of IVMF’s O2O cybersecurity program who now works as a cybersecurity engineer at security services firm Modus21.
Even though he had an IT background, Hardy enrolled in Onward to Opportunity (O2O), a free career training program that provides professional certification and employee support services to transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses, offered through IVMF.
Yurena Burgess, a nurse practitioner who served 15 years in the US Army, is pursuing a bachelor of innovation in computer security at UCCS’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. She decided to pursue a career in cybersecurity because of its growth potential.
Despite doing her own research, Burgess says she wasn’t clear on what a career path in cybersecurity looks like, and she didn’t have a network of people to ask about that.
“It was hard to understand the umbrella of possibilities. Yes, I could look at it online, but it would have been good to have someone guiding me on how to match what I have [with my military experience] to where I can go in a cybersecurity career, to see what the possibilities are, and to understand how can I put my skills to use and transfer my knowledge – which I’m doing slowly as I navigate all the cybersecurity certifications,” Burgess says.
To be clear, neither Burgess nor any others suggest that such challenges hold back veterans any more than civilians. Rather, they say that being able to access education, training, networks, and mentors has helped them be more successful in launching their careers and plotting the next steps in their new professions.
Getting support from organizations
And plenty of companies are doing just that, says Paul Andrus, a principal data scientist at Oracle who entered the cybersecurity industry after serving nearly 20 years in the US Marine Corps.
He says he has found that HR departments and hiring managers can decipher the military lingo that turns up on veterans’ resumes and can match a soldier’s MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty, or an airman’s AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code) to the skills it required and the types of experience it yielded. And many, including his own company have programs to recruit and support military members transitioning out of the service and into the civilian workforce.
“It’s hard for me to quantify this, but organizations are quite receptive to veterans. Companies seem quite sincere in helping veterans,” he says, pointing out that they’ve been recruiting former military members for decades.
Of course, veterans must have the skills needed for the jobs they seek; demonstrate a knowledge of the open position’s duties and the hiring company’s industry; and articulate how their military experience makes them a top candidate, just as any applicant must do, Andrus says.
There is help if you know where to look
And for veterans who haven’t yet mastered all that, Andrus advises “networking with people who actually do the job you want.” He also advises veterans to learn about the environment at the organization they seek to join, asking themselves whether they’d fit in. And he recommends connecting with others to ease the transition.
“You may feel like you’re on the edge of a canyon, but wingmen exist on the other side, too, find them and build those peer relationships,” he says. “There are a lot of agencies that help with this by providing training and education and networking, but ultimately it’s going to be the veteran that gets out there to prove they can do the job and be a good fit.”
Elgee advises veterans entering cyber to find a professional community (pointing specifically to the nonprofit VetSec), build a network of contacts working in cybersecurity, enlist mentors, and position military experiences and skills in terms that speak to the needs of civilian-side cybersecurity jobs.
He also advises veterans to “go for something they think is interesting,” whether that’s pen testing, forensics or another of the myriad jobs in the cybersecurity field. “You’re going to have more fun at work if you’re picking something you’re interested in,” he says, adding that’s good advice for everyone.
As for CISOs and their HR teams, he recommends they have targeted outreach to veterans, by, for example, recruiting at the job fairs held on posts and bases. “It’s not like our population is hard to find,” Elgee says. “And companies with veterans on staff – and most are going to have veterans on staff already – can engage those folks to reach out to applicants to help bridge any gaps.”
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