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JBSA News
NEWS | April 19, 2019

Cyber distance learning course to go online

By Mary Nell Sanchez 502nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas - Threats to cyber networks strike in many forms, but three instructors at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland teach users across the Air Force how to win the battle. The information systems security officers and information security systems managers, or ISSO/ISSM, course has been taught face-to-face for several years, but a new video version will be available on Intelink in May 2019.

“We were tasked with providing more training, more varied training and to train twice as many people this year than we did last year,” said Lauren Gray, 25th Air Force cyber security training manager. “We had to find a way to stretch that dollar and make the training cost effective.”

The 502nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs office captured the three-day course and transformed it into a comprehensive online video for the 25th Air Force to help remedy the problem. 

It contains 14 modules and covers a variety of topics including roles and responsibilities, what a risk management framework is, cyber and insider threats, windows security and an auditing overview.

With this material, Gray said participants are ready to tackle threats to their workplace systems.

“Cyber security officers put together security packages and protect your weapons systems and your networks from cyber attacks,” Gray added. “For people who work in cyber security, there’s a lot involved from knowing what you need to do as a cyber security officer and just making sure we’re defending things properly.

“As a cyber security officer, your day-to-day is pretty mundane, but there may be an incident where you’re running an audit and something unusual pops up,” Gray said. “Somebody plugged something into the network or something has come across your network that shouldn’t be there.”

That’s when students must decide how they’ll respond to the threat, and what steps they need to take. They also need to assure that other parts of their network aren’t affected.

“If you can’t constantly protect the system, you lose the value of your data,” said Dr. Kevin Odom, 25th Air Force NCOIC of corps information system control office.

For example, if affected data is a scheduled bombing, the mission could be compromised, he elaborated.

“Security is not a normal business,” Odom said. “You must protect assets.”

Additional courses are being developed for information security officers and managers. They will include information on security implementation and how to build a security plan along with a course tailored for senior leadership.

The courses are free for Air Force intelligence members. For more information, go to https://intelshare.intelink.gov/sites/afisra-a6s/SitePages/Train.aspx or call 210-925-9524.