A Practitioner’s Guide to Designing and Developing Hands-On Cybersecurity Skilling Continuation Labs

Federal cybersecurity professionals face a unique set of threats, risks, regulations, and requirements. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) leveraged its experience with cybersecurity best practices, federal government guidance and recommendations, and workforce development practices to deliver engaging, specialized training for federal cybersecurity professionals. In partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Cyber Mission Readiness (CMR) directorate of the CERT Division at the SEI developed a set of Skilling Continuation Labs (SCLs) to provide novel, relevant, and unique hands-on immersive training to upskill the federal cybersecurity workforce. To help support training lab developers, this report draws on CMR team members’ expertise in developing high-fidelity cybersecurity training labs for the federal workforce and provides recommendations and guidelines for developing effective and immersive hands-on cybersecurity labs.