Bologna process revisited: educating information security and malware experts

Abstract

The Bologna process has resulted in the re- structuring of undergraduate and graduate education across Europe. This paper outlines what these changes mean for acquiring degrees in information security and how various universities have tried to respond to these demands. What is unclear at this stage is how the offering of continuous master degrees at Polytechnic and Applied Science Universities will affect the content and curriculum being taught in computer science and information security in particular. This question must be addressed since polytechnics are more industry focused and less research oriented than their university-counterparts. What seems to be clear at this stage is that continuous type master programs in computer science demand a greater level of mathematical knowledge than specialized masters. Moreover, due to the amount of credits that must be acquired, graduates of these types of programs will bring a deeper knowledge about the specialization such as, information security or malware, they acquired at university. This movement toward greater convergence in post secondary education may not have made things easier for recruiters, who are trying to hire graduates in information security or anti-virus experts. In fact, as this paper shows while the Bologna process may have eliminated the obvious differences, countless intricate and not so obvious differences have been added making it sometimes obscure for a bystander.