ABOUT THE NCCSA

Welcome to NCCSA, the new Cyber Education Student Organization that focuses on cybersecurity! This new Student Alliance responds to the urgent demand for trained cybersecurity talent while recognizing the importance of providing students with knowledge, career, and academic pathway information in this exciting and critical field.

NCCSA is a school-based network of student-run chapters that provide learning, competing, leadership and soft-skills development, networking, skill-building, and social opportunities that will help student members prepare for the vast array of career pathways in technology and cybersecurity. This is a great fit for the growing number of schools offering more computer science and cybersecurity courses nationwide

NCCSA started through the grassroots effort of students, teachers, community college peers, and the National Cybersecurity Center who collaborated with partners and stakeholders to organize a student organization that meets the needs of cyber students across the country. High schools are starting chapters, and cybersecurity and computer science teachers from across the country are joining the mission as NCCSA chapter advisors to serve cyber students and address the cyber talent gap.

The NCCSA start-up guide is available here for schools, districts, and educators that are seeking to join the effort to offer students more options that encourage meaningful and important career pathways. This guide makes standing up a chapter very easy for busy educators! The background, purpose, and bylaws are included so approaching district leadership with a plan for a new student organization is not time-consuming for educators.

Chapters should select student leaders and develop an activity plan as soon as possible upon launching NCCSA. Students within and across chapters can work together to plan Fall or Spring conferences, participation in competitive events, industry-sponsored programs, networking events, field trips, guest speakers, fundraisers, skill-building challenges, social events, or any related activity that serves the interest of the members.

CyberPatriot is one of the potential competitive arms of this Student Cyber Organization for those students that choose to compete, and there are many other competition opportunities that chapters can join. This is a great fit for any school that either has a CyberPatriot team and/or has students and an administration that recognizes this critical and exciting career path. Many schools are choosing to have evening chapter meetings so that they can more easily tap into the expertise and interest of cyber professionals and parents that understand this important learning opportunity for students and will step in as coaches and mentors.

Data will be collected on NCCSA chapter locations and membership counts so that we can track participation. With the anticipated momentum, it will not be long before we can apply as a nationally recognized CTSO which requires that we need to show that there are chapters in multiple states and a great amount of participation from students. Chapters must utilize the name NCCSA and the logo for consistency. Good luck to all chapters—we are confident that student members will enjoy participating in this new cybersecurity student organization!

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