Bringing security into traditional computer science courses

Abstract

In today's world, it is critical that our students get exposure to security education as part of their Computer Science (CS) curriculum. The lack of security consciousness in digital workforce is costing businesses, government, and citizens severely every year. A significant reason behind this problem stems from the fact that the majority of higher education institutions do not have adequate resources to educate CS students in information assurance (IA) and security. While security is not required in the current CS curriculum, IA has been designated as a knowledge area in the proposed ACM/IEEE-CS CS Curricula 2013. Also, the absence of security topics in core CS subject matters not only leaves students security oblivious, but also prevents higher education institutions from applying for National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Programs (CAE/IAE) accreditation, which provides access to government scholarships and grants. In this session, we will discuss challenges CS faculty face in integrating security topics in traditional CS courses and call attention to existing government funded supports that faculty can leverage in doing so. To share ideas and resources, we hope to bring together security educators who are active in this field with a community of CS educators who may not have any background in teaching security but recognize the need for it and are interested in teaching security topics as part of their regular course curriculum.