NASEO has been awarded a new cooperative agreement through the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Regional Alliances and Multistakeholder Partnerships to Stimulate (RAMPS) Cybersecurity Education and Workforce Development program to support a cybersecurity workforce pipeline project for electric utilities in Kentucky. NASEO is one of nine recipients announced by NIST on September 18, 2026.

Working with the Kentucky Office of Energy Policy (KY OEP), the Commonwealth's State Energy Office, NASEO will lead a project to develop an employer-validated cybersecurity workforce pathway for the electric utility sector. The project brings together the University of Louisville, a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, and Kentucky electric utilities covering generation, transmission, and distribution business models. The project will leverage the work being sponsored by KY OEP at the University of Louisville-integrating Idaho National Laboratory's Cyber-Informed Engineering (INL CIE) curriculum- to develop a publicly available Replication Playbook, modeled on NASEO's Programs and Policies in a Box, so that any of the 56 State and Territory Energy Offices can stand up a similar workforce pipeline. The model is intended to be sustainable beyond the award; State Energy Offices can pursue it with U.S. Department of Energy State Energy Program funds. This approach also aims to benefit smaller rural cooperative and municipal utilities, which often have fewer resources for cybersecurity hiring than larger utilities.

Kenya Stump, the Director of KY OEP remarked: "Having a trained cybersecurity workforce is essential for protecting our critical energy infrastructure in the digital age. As we build our capacity to prepare, respond, and recover, our partnership with NASEO, academia, and utilities is critical and this grant will help develop a replicable model."

This project is a direct response to After-Action Report findings from the first-ever Kentucky Cybersecurity Workshop: From Risk to Readiness hosted by KY OEP, with support from NASEO, INL's Technical Assistance for Digital Assurance program, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (US DOE CESER) in April of 2027, which highlighted that cyber workforce capacity and expertise is a critical constraint. Many agencies, particularly smaller and rural entities, lack sufficient cybersecurity staffing and technical expertise."

NIST's NICE program leads RAMPS, which aims to align local employer needs with education and training. In NIST's announcement, NICE Director Karen Wetzel said the program "brings together industry, educational and economic development participants to collectively build a skilled cybersecurity workforce that meets the unique needs of each community."

NASEO will share progress and lessons learned with State Energy Offices through briefings, the NASEO Annual Meeting, and NIST's NICE Conference & Expo. Please reach out to Campbell Delahoyde ([email protected]) with any questions.