Cybersecurity Awareness Training for CERT

Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training covers basic skills that are important to know in a disaster when emergency services are not available. Volunteers who participate in CERT training have a better understanding of potential threats to the community, along with actionable steps they can take to mitigate risk and improve outcomes.

To provide additional support to CERT volunteers and the important role they play in their communities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to provide a list of cybersecurity awareness training courses CERT volunteers can take to improve their ability to prepare for and respond to cybersecurity threats. The courses are self­paced and publicly available at no cost from the Federal Virtual Training Environment and the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium (NCPC). Course topics range from cyber essentials and fundamentals of cyber risk management to cyber ethics and mobile device security. To access these courses, visit the Cybersecurity Awareness Training website at https://community.fema.gov/PreparednessCommunity/s/cert-trainings?language=en_US&tabset-82942=19a04.

Last month, FEMA hosted a webinar with CISA and NCPC officials to let participants know about these training courses and where to find them. "These handpicked and self­paced courses will provide you with tools to recognize, prevent and mitigate cyberthreats and also support our response to future events," said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.

Presenters discussed concepts from the courses and described how they give CERT volunteers knowledge, skills and up­to­date practices to plan for and protect against cybersecurity threats in the communities they serve.

“As the threat environment is evolving, we want to make sure that CERT volunteers are prepared to assist their communities, local emergency management agencies, and other organizations in their community, whether it’s helping with the direct response to a cybersecurity attack or indirectly helping with the cascading impacts,” said ICPD Acting Director Amanda Smith. “We have worked with CISA and the NCPC to put together these lists of cybersecurity courses that already exist and are most relevant to CERT volunteers." -- from FEMA’s Preparedness Connect. (2024).