Findings

Congress find the following: (1) Domestic factory output has increased by 21 percent since June 2009, but manufacturing employment has only increased 5 percent during that time, and has been flat since late 2014. (2) As manufacturers leverage new technologies from robotics to distributed control systems to create modern factories and industrial plants, different employment requirements have emerged including the need for cybersecurity talent. (3) Leading cybersecurity experts have reported a spike of 250 percent in industrial automation and control system cyber-incidents occurring during the period between 2011 and 2015 and as a result are seeking personnel with knowledge of their industry coupled with knowledge of security technology to prevent their organization from becoming victims of cyber-attacks.