What is it about?
We demonstrated that a project-based capstone experience is an effective context for teaching the foundations of security and privacy. We developed ten learning modules designed to introduce and sensitize students to foundational cybersecurity concepts. Then we delivered the modules in the treatment sections of a two-term capstone course involving the development of software solutions for external clients. Control sections of the course were taught without the modules as usual. We evaluated the effectiveness of the modules by administering pre-treatment and post-treatment assessments of cybersecurity knowledge and collecting written student reflections after the delivery of each module. We found that the students in the treatment condition exhibited statistically significant increases in their knowledge of foundational security and privacy concepts compared to those in the control condition without the modules. Further, student reflections indicate that they appreciated the content of the modules and were readily able to apply the concepts to their projects.
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Why is it important?
Other studies have shown that graduates of computing majors have inadequate training in cybersecurity. This contributes to the frequency of security breaches. We show that embedding cybersecurity instruction in capstone courses is one effective way to address that training gap.
Perspectives
As new applications are delivered and enhancements are made to existing applications, they bring with them new vulnerabilities that risk individual security and privacy. The situation is not getting better. Indeed, AI assisted programming is making the situation worse. Where cybersecurity used to be tied to certain specializations in computer science it has become essential that all students are trained in foundational principles of security and privacy. Our study shows that a capstone course is an effective context for teaching these principles.
Brandt Redd
University of Utah
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Layering Sociotechnical Cybersecurity Concepts Within Project-Based Learning, August 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3632620.3671093.
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