Task, Knowledge, Skill, and Ability: Equipping the Small-Medium Businesses Cybersecurity Workforce

With cyberattacks becoming more frequent and targeted, small-medium businesses (SMBs) are forced to adopt a cybersecurity framework to help secure their cyberspace. While these frameworks are a good starting point for businesses and offer critical information on identifying, preventing, and responding to cyber incidents, they can be hard to navigate and implement. To help with this issue, this paper identifies the most frequent attack vectors to SMBs and proposes a practical model of Knowledge, Skills, Ability, and Tasks (TKSA) from the NICE Framework for those attacks. SMBs can use the model as a guideline to assess, equip their existing workforce, or aid in hiring new employees. Additionally, educational institutions can use the model to develop scenario-based learning modules to adequately equip the emerging cybersecurity workforce for SMBs.