Obscurity of network security course curriculum

Abstract

Information security courses have become an important part of Computer Science curricula over the past decade, however, related course syllabi are becoming distorted with the enormity of ad hoc topics. Talking about the buffer overflow, which when technically considered, complies with the information overflow and obscurity pushed onto young minds. Many of us try to train young dogs using old tricks that are mostly based on badly formed and cryptic specifications. There exist a variety of curricula being used for cryptography courses, however, topic areas covering information security in general seem to be rather indistinct and theoretically focused. Due to lack of appropriate prerequisite knowledge and instructional approaches active involvement of multidisciplinary students is much harder to realize. This article presents a generic framework for designing and assessing a curriculum that results in a prerequisite course set and a course syllabus needed for a modern Information Security course. © 2011 ACM.