Secure Modules for Undergraduate Software Engineering Courses

Abstract

Security affects every software component in different types of computing systems. Many vulnerabilities and attacks on software systems are due to security weaknesses in the software itself. During the process of software specification, development, or testing, security issues are either taken into consideration insufficiently or not at all. Such software, due to internal weaknesses is prone to new attacks. By teaching secure software engineering techniques for designing and developing software modules, students would learn systematic secure software development techniques, such as defect detecting and security testing. This paper presents a series of modules that are designed to be integrated into undergraduate software engineering courses from a security perspective. The goal of the modules is to teach the building of robust software security requirements, secure software design and development, and secure software verification through a secure software development lifecycle.