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Securing the cyber enterprise and its global supply chain has become a national strategic priority. The President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) and the White House’s National Strategy for Supply Chain Security (released in January 2012) have been two of the most recent and important policy directives addressing this urgent task. These directives provide a compelling rationale for the need for strong multidisciplinary leadership in the cyber enterprise of today and underscore the importance of the Cybersecurity Leadership track within the Graduate Certificate of Professional Studies from the prestigious University of Maryland, College Park. Watch the Video

It is a time of inflection for the cybersecurity profession. The impacts of cybersecurity have reached far beyond the technical community to transform the operating rules of economic competitiveness, diplomacy, and even military conflict. Consider this: a recent poll of over 300 global security experts by the think tank, Security & Defense Agenda (SDA) found 57 percent of experts believe that an arms race is taking place in cyber space and 36 percent believe cybersecurity is more important than missile defense.

Government and the private sector increasingly require a new kind of leader who can operate in cyberspace on a planetary scale and help guide border-spanning Information Communications Technology (ICT) ecosystems through the unprecedented challenges of transnational terrorism, commercial espionage, natural disasters, and extreme supply chain disruption. This new type of cyber leader must not only be passionate and technologically sophisticated, but must also possess the most up to date enterprise risk management and systems-thinking skills.

The Smith School – with support from a grant from SAIC – has partnered with the A. James Clark School of Engineering and the School Of Public Policy to create a truly unique Certificate Program that fuses the policy, acquisition, supply chain risk management, network security, and innovation and cultural change disciplines to provide students with a solid foundation from a practitioner perspective. We are confident our graduates will be in the vanguard of the profession; well prepared to assume executive roles and craft safer, more secure cyber enterprises.

Dr. Donald. R. Riley
Academic Director, Graduate Certificate of Professional Studies in Cybersecurity Leadership
Professor of Information Systems, Department of Decisions, Operations and Information Technology
Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland
College Park, MD