What inspired you to become an NCPC instructor, and what experience do you bring to the courses you teach?
I became inspired with the opportunity to pass on the lessons and experience that I have had during my career in IT. As to my experience, I have over 25 years of experience in IT, most of which was in a community mental healthcare facility. As such, I was exposed to a lot of different situations, from dealing with a limited budget, resistance to change, business email compromise, regulations, and eventually, a major cyber attack on the agency.
How do you tailor your instruction to meet the needs of diverse audiences, such as technical or non-technical personnel?
I try to listen to the background given during introductions and note who I might need to adjust my instruction for. This may be just explaining technical items more fully, or for more technical people, it may be just glossing over the technical and explaining more of the importance of the topic. An example of this is when I was teaching an awareness class for senior officials, but my class was filled with many CISOs. As such, I pulled on my experience dealing with senior officials at my previous organizations to draw out conversations on how to get across to senior officials the importance of cybersecurity.
How do you see NCPC training contributing to national cybersecurity resilience and community preparedness?
It is ensuring that more people are current on best practices and better prepared for cyber incidents. We also focus on working with emergency management to ensure both the cyber people and emergency management people are more familiar with how to help and support each other.
What feedback have you received from participants that highlights the value or effectiveness of NCPC courses?
Some of the best feedback I have received is with regard to sharing stories and experiences with actual cyber incidents. Especially when I am able to have others share their experiences, as this leads to better networking among the participants.
How do you stay current with evolving cyber threats and integrate that knowledge into your instruction?
A lot of reading on cyber attacks, especially after action reports when available. I try to collect stories from other instructors and participants on incidents that they have directly gone through.
Looking ahead, what are your hopes for the future of the NCPC and its role in strengthening national cybersecurity preparedness?
I hope to continue to be able to travel the country and provide knowledge to participants on how to better prepare and deal with cyber incidents. I especially hope we can continue to find a way to go into smaller communities/locals as I feel that many of these are needing our courses due to more limited resources.
What is your favorite NCPC course?
My favorite is most likely PER-371 Cybersecurity Incident Response and Management, as the participants are more hands-on in this class, but we still have a chance for instructors to pass on their experiences. For an on-the-road delivery, I would say MGT-465 Recovering from Cybersecurity Incidents, since I’ve gone through a major cyber attack myself and can share my experiences with the participants.
How does the NCPC prepare participants for real-world cybersecurity concerns?
We provide insights on how to prepare for, deal with, and recover from cyber attacks. The hope is to provide participants with guidance on how to prevent many attacks, contain and eradicate attacks that do get through, and recover more quickly from those.
Noel Templeton is a cyber defense and compliance instructor with the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) National Emergency Response and Recovery Training Center (NERRTC).