An Executive Order signed by United States President Donald Trump aims to grow the government’s cybersecurity capability, improve integration of the cybersecurity workforce between federal departments, and strengthen the skills of individual cybersecurity practitioners. The order, titled Executive Order on America’s Cybersecurity Workforce and signed by the president on May 2, creates measures to help federal agencies retrain workers interested in cybersecurity and requires agencies to adopt the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Framework in government contracts. It includes an incentive component, creating an annual competition with cash rewards of at least $25,000 “to identify, challenge, and reward the United States Government’s best cybersecurity practitioners and teams across offensive and defensive cybersecurity disciplines.” The order’s primary goal is to

Name: John KentTitle: Manager IT, DevSecOpsEmployer: FedExLocation: Irving, TexasEducation: BAAS Computer Science, MS CybersecurityYears in IT: 37Years in cybersecurity and/or privacy: 13Cybersecurity certifications: CSSLP, CEH, CHFI   How did you decide upon a career in security software development? My passion for software development began in 1981 and launched my career in 1987. It wasn’t until my first exposure to pen test results in 2005 that I understood software design, development, test and operations from a much wider perspective. There was so much more to programming than creating working software — it had to be resilient to malicious actors and preserve confidentiality, integrity, and availability. I was hooked! Later, when I discovered that the University of Dallas had a top cybersecurity graduate program, I