IT security in secondary CS education

Abstract

There is a steady increase of digital networking in our world, e. g. in the form of smart devices as part of the internet-of-things or more recently with daily video conferences. This progress is accompanied by weekly media reports on security incidents affecting the IT we use on a daily basis. In order to provide orientation in this seemingly insecure digital world, it is necessary for every digital citizen to have a basic knowledge of the field of IT security. Current curricula for secondary CS education already try to cover some aspects of IT security - however, practical reports suggest that some important security-related topics have not yet been considered. Based on this assumption, we use a Qualitative Content Analysis to compare international as well as German secondary school curricula with an up-to-date body of knowledge of IT security to identify the gap to knowledge areas in current curricula.Our results show that there is not only a lack of more in-depth topics, e. g. involving newer technologies, like internet-of-things security, the knowledge for the development of secure software - but also human factors in IT security are hardly considered in any curriculum. For further research, the results support the adjustment of relevant IT security concepts for secondary CS education.