Why vets can handle cyberthreats

Air Force veteran Frankie Sclafani considers himself lucky that his military experience translated directly to his civilian career as a cybersecurity expert.

Sclafani managed critical cyber operations for the Maryland Air National Guard, led network operations for the US Air Force, and conducted incident response and signal-intelligence collection for the National Security Agency. He’s also jumped into the private sector, where he helped secure systems at Google, Mandiant, and now the managed detection and response company Deepwatch.

Other veterans haven’t had as smooth of a professional transition. Sclafani said they may feel lost after leaving the military for civilian life and a new potential career.

“When you leave the military, a lot of people don’t tell you this, but there is a little bit of a sense of feeling lost and maybe directionless or missionless,” Sclafani told IT Brew.

He sees cybersecurity as a welcoming destination for veterans, whose years spent tracking adversaries can translate well to a cyber career with its share of threat hunting.

SOC’d and loaded. A security operations center (SOC)—a hub for monitoring IT infrastructure—sends alerts about potentially malicious activity. A SOC analyst often examines the findings, perhaps a phishing message or an unexpected login. Someone as familiar with following procedures as a military pro might appreciate the built-in structure found in many of these command centers, according to Sclafani. SOCs frequently have a hierarchy of tiers with specific and increasing responsibilities.

A veteran, he adds, has been trained to think like an adversary, ​​and they can potentially put themselves in the headspace of a threat actor trying to evade detection.

“Having that discipline and that structure and those procedures helps ensure we get all of the correct intelligence that we need,” Sclafani said. For an alert like a phishing email, he has seen “next-level” investigations in a SOC that include interacting with a phishing link through a sandbox environment, and reviewing executables hosted on a phishing message’s domain.

Getting a foot in the SOC. Groups like SANS Technology Institute, the Department of Defense’s “SkillBridge” program, and the nonprofit VetSec offer perks for military veterans looking to begin a cybersecurity career, including early training options and internship opportunities.

With SkillBridge, active duty members receive their full military pay and benefits while they’re interning at a civilian company.

“While I didn’t utilize SkillBridge when I was transitioning out of the military, I wish that I did, and I wish that I knew more about it at the time I was leaving active duty,” Sclafani said.

Cybersecurity jobs are certainly in demand: CyberSeek, a provider of cybersecurity workforce data, revealed more than 514,000 cybersecurity job openings online. The veteran unemployment rate stood at 3.1% as of August 2025, according to US Department of Labor statistics—only slightly lower than the 3.5% unemployment rate in August 2024.

Sclafani said he understands how “intimidating and challenging” a new career phase can be for a military vet who has ended their service.

“It’s a scary transition. So, anything that we can do, I think, as a population, to help make that transition a little bit easier for those who decided to serve and set them up for success and good opportunities is going to be big,” he said.