Assistance program
CyberSecurity Core Curriculum
$24.0 Million committed in FY2025–FY2026
- Agency
- National Security Agency (Nsa), Dept of Defense
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 12.905
- What it does
- To meet future national security challenges, the NSA (and other DoD and Federal Agencies/Components) partner with institutions of higher education to develop the cybersecurity talent and tools need by: • Funding skill development programs like summer camps • Promoting development of curricula for the growing cybersecurity career field • Sponsoring skills and research paper competitions • Awarding research grants and funding research labs and projects • Funding institutions who support the larger cybersecurity community in faculty, lab, and curriculum development This is not a complete list, there may be other topic areas that further cybersecurity for the nation that the NCAE-C Program Office could release via a grant solicitation. These partnerships help cultivate the next generation of experts in cybersecurity who can protect our nation from cyberattacks. Grants will be awarded to institutions of higher learning who are designated as either a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research, and National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations. All three programs are housed under the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity program and hereinafter will be referred to as CAEs.
- Who benefits
- Must be a U.S. college or University, a public or private school or school system, or a not-for-profit educational institution. The principal investigator and program staff must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the United States. Program eligibility will be determined by NSA’s College of Cyber.
- Who applies
- CAEs must be in good standing with the CAE Program Office as well as the CAE Grant Program Office. They must be current on all reporting requirements and show past performance in executing such grants. CAEs must also submit a proposal in response to any published solicitation by the due date with all required forms and documentation to be considered. All recipients of grant funding must be a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident of the United States. Additional eligible requirements will be provided in the solicitation/application .
- Authorized by
- 10 USC 2192(b)
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments