DCWF (DoD Cyber Workforce Framework)

securitygovernance & risk

The United States Department of Defense's own catalogue of cyber work roles, aligned with but distinct from the NICE Framework.

Two frameworks describing the same trade for different audiences, and since March 2025 they are formally connected: NICE removed its Cyberspace Effects and Cyberspace Intelligence categories and the roles in them moved here, explicitly to harmonise the two. The division that leaves is coherent. NICE now covers cybersecurity work as any organisation might practise it - governance, design, implementation, defence, investigation - while the DCWF additionally covers work that only a military carries out, which is where offensive cyberspace operations and intelligence roles live. If you are mapping a civilian team, NICE is the right instrument. If you are reading a role description that mentions cyberspace effects, you are reading the defence framework, and possibly a document written before the split that has not been updated. The practical consequence for anyone outside the United States is that both frameworks leak into commercial job adverts and training syllabi worldwide, because contractors adopt the vocabulary of the buyer.

Also known as: dcwf, dod cyber workforce framework, dod 8140

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