An Innovative Cybersecurity Curriculum for Civilian and Military Workforce

Kansas State University, Manhattan KS

Investigators

Abstract

In this SFS Capacity Building project, the Center for Information and Systems Assurance (CISA) at Kansas State University, which is a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research (CAE-R), is collaborating with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) and Manhattan Area Technical College (MATC) to develop a comprehensive cybersecurity/information assurance curriculum appropriate for the different student bodies at the three institutions. Kansas State University is a public land-grant university with a high level of research activity. CGSC's mission is to educate military officers to support the Army's operational requirements. MATC is a two-year public institution of higher education. Four courses constitute the overall curriculum being developed: Introduction to Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, Emerging Threats in Cyberspace, Advanced Cyber-Offense and -Defense Technologies, and Cyber-Warfare. Expected outcomes of the project are: * a comprehensive cybersecurity curriculum that addresses the challenge of educating and providing hands-on training to students of broad academic backgrounds; * courses with innovative modules and lesson plans based on lab exercises, warfare, and cyber-threat scenarios that can seamlessly integrate security education content throughout different parts of existing information technology curricula; * detailed instructional manuals to accompany each course module; and * enhancement of faculty expertise in cybersecurity at the partnering institutions. Course materials are being created, piloted, and evaluated at the three institutions, and are being made available to a wider audience via the Web. The investigators are also using connections with other regional colleges and leveraging other initiatives at Kansas State -- e.g., Research Experiences for Teachers (RET), GK-12 STEM Fellows, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), and Girls Researching Our World (GROW) -- to extend the reach of the curriculum.