Sponsors (3)
The bill accelerates the growth of the domestic cybersecurity workforce and strengthens employer incentives to train employees—particularly benefiting students, tech workers, and contractors—at the cost of substantial federal spending, program complexity, and a design that may advantage larger or better-resourced firms while leaving some workers and small businesses behind.
Students and prospective cybersecurity professionals would gain substantially expanded training and credentialing opportunities (more scholarships, instructor support, NSF program increases, and employer-backed credentialing), improving the supply of trained cyber workers.
Employers and government contractors get financial and procurement incentives (a 50% tax credit up to $5,000 per employee plus a competitive scoring boost for credit-claiming contractors), lowering net training costs and encouraging firms to invest in employee cybersecurity skills.
Tech workers (and cybersecurity instructors) who work in designated distressed areas can receive up to $25,000 in federal student loan cancellation after sustained service, encouraging recruitment and retention of cyber talent in economically distressed and rural communities.
The package increases federal costs—through the employer tax credit, expanded scholarships/program funding, and up to $25,000 per-borrower loan cancellations—raising outlays or reducing federal revenue and potentially increasing deficits or crowding out other spending.
Program design favors better-resourced firms and credentialed workers: small firms or start-ups with little tax liability may not benefit from the credit, procurement scoring advantages help credit-claiming contractors, and lower-skilled manufacturing workers may be left behind if retraining is inaccessible.
Narrow eligibility rules and statutory/administrative changes could exclude valuable training and some workers (credit tied to specific NCWF-listed credentials; strict in-area work/time rules for loan cancellation; bar on stacking forgiveness), while redesignations and blank statutory insertions create legal ambiguity and administrative burden.
Based on analysis of 12 sections of legislative text.
Creates a 50% employer tax credit for cybersecurity training, student loan cancellation for qualifying cybersecurity workers, expands CyberCorps scholarships, and gives a federal procurement scoring boost to employers who used the credit.
Official title: To increase cybersecurity education and job growth, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Ted Lieu · Last progress March 27, 2025
Creates a package of incentives and program changes to grow the U.S. cybersecurity workforce. It provides a new employer tax credit for funding employee cybersecurity education, forgiveness for certain federal student loans for borrowers who work in qualifying cybersecurity jobs in distressed areas, expansions and prioritization changes for federal cybersecurity scholarship and training programs, and a procurement preference (5-point score boost) for contractors that have used the new tax credit. The bill ties definitions of qualifying jobs and training to the NIST/NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework, directs NSF program funding goals as a policy preference, and changes placement rules for the CyberCorps scholarship program.