Biblio
This innovative practice paper considers the heightening awareness of the need for cybersecurity programs in light of several well publicized cyber-attacks in recent years. An examination of the academic job market reveals that a significant number of institutions are looking to hire new faculty in the area of cybersecurity. Additionally, a growing number of universities are starting to offer courses, certifications and degrees in cybersecurity. Other recent activity includes the development of a model cybersecurity curriculum and the creation of a program accreditation criteria for cybersecurity through ABET. This sudden and significant growth in demand for cybersecurity expertise has some similarities to the significant demand for networking faculty that Computer Science programs experienced in the late 1980s as a result of the rise of the Internet. This paper examines the resources necessary to respond to the demand for cybersecurity courses and programs and draws some parallels and distinctions to the demand for networking faculty over 25 years ago. Faculty and administration are faced with a plethora of questions to answer as they approach this problem: What degree and courses to offer, what certifications to consider, which curriculum to incorporate and how to deliver the material (online, faceto-face, or something in-between)? However, the most pressing question in today's fiscal climate in higher education is: what resources will it take to deliver a cybersecurity program?
This Work-In-Progress Paper for the Innovative Practice Category presents a novel experiment in active learning of cybersecurity. We introduced a new workshop on hacking for an existing science-popularizing program at our university. The workshop participants, 28 teenagers, played a cybersecurity game designed for training undergraduates and professionals in penetration testing. Unlike in learning environments that are simplified for young learners, the game features a realistic virtual network infrastructure. This allows exploring security tools in an authentic scenario, which is complemented by a background story. Our research aim is to examine how young players approach using cybersecurity tools by interacting with the professional game. A preliminary analysis of the game session showed several challenges that the workshop participants faced. Nevertheless, they reported learning about security tools and exploits, and 61% of them reported wanting to learn more about cybersecurity after the workshop. Our results support the notion that young learners should be allowed more hands-on experience with security topics, both in formal education and informal extracurricular events.
This Innovate Practice full paper presents a cloud-based personalized learning lab platform. Personalized learning is gaining popularity in online computer science education due to its characteristics of pacing the learning progress and adapting the instructional approach to each individual learner from a diverse background. Among various instructional methods in computer science education, hands-on labs have unique requirements of understanding learner's behavior and assessing learner's performance for personalization. However, it is rarely addressed in existing research. In this paper, we propose a personalized learning platform called ThoTh Lab specifically designed for computer science hands-on labs in a cloud environment. ThoTh Lab can identify the learning style from student activities and adapt learning material accordingly. With the awareness of student learning styles, instructors are able to use techniques more suitable for the specific student, and hence, improve the speed and quality of the learning process. With that in mind, ThoTh Lab also provides student performance prediction, which allows the instructors to change the learning progress and take other measurements to help the students timely. For example, instructors may provide more detailed instructions to help slow starters, while assigning more challenging labs to those quick learners in the same class. To evaluate ThoTh Lab, we conducted an experiment and collected data from an upper-division cybersecurity class for undergraduate students at Arizona State University in the US. The results show that ThoTh Lab can identify learning style with reasonable accuracy. By leveraging the personalized lab platform for a senior level cybersecurity course, our lab-use study also shows that the presented solution improves students engagement with better understanding of lab assignments, spending more effort on hands-on projects, and thus greatly enhancing learning outcomes.
This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper makes the case for using concept inventories in cybersecurity education and presents an example of the development of a concept inventory in the field of secure programming. The secure programming concept inventory is being developed by a team of researchers from four universities. We used a Delphi study to define the content area to be covered by the concept inventory. Participants in the Delphi study included ten experts from academia, government, and industry. Based on the results, we constructed a concept map of secure programming concepts. We then compared this concept map to the Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education Curriculum 2017 guidelines to ensure complete coverage of secure programming concepts. Our mapping indicates a substantial match between the concept map and those guidelines.
Training the future cybersecurity workforce to respond to emerging threats requires introduction of novel educational interventions into the cybersecurity curriculum. To be effective, these interventions have to incorporate trending knowledge from cybersecurity and other related domains while allowing for experiential learning through hands-on experimentation. To date, the traditional interdisciplinary approach for cybersecurity training has infused political science, law, economics or linguistics knowledge into the cybersecurity curriculum, allowing for limited experimentation. Cybersecurity students were left with little opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities in domains outside of these. Also, students in outside majors had no options to get into cybersecurity. With this in mind, we developed an interdisciplinary course for experiential learning in the fields of cybersecurity and interaction design. The inaugural course teaches students from cybersecurity, user interaction design, and visual design the principles of designing for secure use - or secure design - and allows them to apply them for prototyping of Internet-of-Things (IoT) products for smart homes. This paper elaborates on the concepts of secure design and how our approach enhances the training of the future cybersecurity workforce.
Healthcare is a vital component of every nation's critical infrastructure, yet it is one of the most vulnerable sector for cyber-attacks. To enforce the knowledge on information security processes and data protection procedures, educational and training schemes should be establishedfor information technology (IT) staff working in healthcare settings. However, only training IT staff is not enough, as many of cybersecurity threats are caused by human errors or lack of awareness. Current awareness and training schemes are often implemented in silos, concentrating on one aspect of cybersecurity at a time. Proactive Resilience Educational Framework (Prosilience EF) provides a holistic cyber resilience and security framework for developing and delivering a multilateral educational and training scheme based on a proactive approach to cybersecurity. The framework is built on the principle that education and training must be interactive, guided, meaningful and directly relevant to the user' operational environment. The framework addresses capacity mapping, cyber resilience level measuring, utilizing available and mapping missing resources, adaptive learning technologies and dynamic content delivery. Prosilience EF launches an iterative process of awareness and training development with relevant stakeholders (end users - hospitals, healthcare authorities, cybersecurity training providers, industry members), evaluating the framework via joint exercises/workshops andfurther developing the framework.
This Research to Practice Full Paper presents a new methodology in cybersecurity education. In the context of the cybersecurity profession, the `isolation problem' refers to the observed isolation of different knowledge units, as well as the isolation of technical and business perspectives. Due to limitations in existing cybersecurity education, professionals entering the field are often trapped in microscopic perspectives, and struggle to extend their findings to grasp the big picture in a target network scenario. Guided by a previous developed and published framework named “cross-layer situation knowledge reference model” (SKRM), which delivers comprehensive level big picture situation awareness, our new methodology targets at developing suites of teaching modules to address the above issues. The modules, featuring interactive hands-on labs that emulate real-world multiple-step attacks, will help students form a knowledge network instead of isolated conceptual knowledge units. Students will not just be required to leverage various techniques/tools to analyze breakpoints and complete individual modules; they will be required to connect logically the outputs of these techniques/tools to infer the ground truth and gain big picture awareness of the cyber situation. The modules will be able to be used separately or as a whole in a typical network security course.
This Innovate Practice Work in Progress paper is about education on Cybersecurity, which is essential in training of innovative talents in the era of the Internet. Besides knowledge and skills, it is important as well to enhance the students' awareness of cybersecurity in daily life. Considering that contactless smart cards are common and widely used in various areas, one basic and two advanced contactless smart card experiments were designed innovatively and assigned to junior students in 3-people groups in an introductory cybersecurity summer course. The experimental principles, facilities, contents and arrangement are introduced successively. Classroom tests were managed before and after the experiments, and a box and whisker plot is used to describe the distributions of the scores in both tests. The experimental output and student feedback implied the learning objectives were achieved through the problem-based, active and group learning experience during the experiments.
This Research Work in Progress paper presents a study on improving student learning performance in a virtual hands-on lab system in cybersecurity education. As the demand for cybersecurity-trained professionals rapidly increasing, virtual hands-on lab systems have been introduced into cybersecurity education as a tool to enhance students' learning. To improve learning in a virtual hands-on lab system, instructors need to understand: what learning activities are associated with students' learning performance in this system? What relationship exists between different learning activities? What instructors can do to improve learning outcomes in this system? However, few of these questions has been studied for using virtual hands-on lab in cybersecurity education. In this research, we present our recent findings by identifying that two learning activities are positively associated with students' learning performance. Notably, the learning activity of reading lab materials (p \textbackslashtextless; 0:01) plays a more significant role in hands-on learning than the learning activity of working on lab tasks (p \textbackslashtextless; 0:05) in cybersecurity education.In addition, a student, who spends longer time on reading lab materials, may work longer time on lab tasks (p \textbackslashtextless; 0:01).
Cybersecurity education is a pressing need, when computer systems and mobile devices are ubiquitous and so are the associated threats. However, in the teaching and learning process of cybersecurity, it is challenging when the students are from diverse disciplines with various academic backgrounds. In this project, a number of virtual laboratories are developed to facilitate the teaching and learning process in a cybersecurity course. The aim of the laboratories is to strengthen students’ understanding of cybersecurity topics, and to provide students hands-on experience of encountering various security threats. The results of this project indicate that virtual laboratories do facilitate the teaching and learning process in cybersecurity for diverse discipline students. Also, we observed that there is an underestimation of the difficulty of studying cybersecurity by the students due to the general image of cybersecurity in public, which had a negative impact on the student’s interest in studying cybersecurity.
The search for alternative delivery modes to teaching has been one of the pressing concerns of numerous educational institutions. One key innovation to improve teaching and learning is e-learning which has undergone enormous improvements. From its focus on text-based environment, it has evolved into Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) which provide more stimulating and immersive experiences among learners and educators. An example of VLEs is the virtual world which is an emerging educational platform among universities worldwide. One very interesting topic that can be taught using the virtual world is cybersecurity. Simulating cybersecurity in the virtual world may give a realistic experience to students which can be hardly achieved by classroom teaching. To date, there are quite a number of studies focused on cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity behavior. But none has focused looking into the effect of digital simulation in the virtual world, as a new educational platform, in the cybersecurity attitude of the students. It is in this regard that this study has been conducted by designing simulation in the virtual world lessons that teaches the five aspects of cybersecurity namely; malware, phishing, social engineering, password usage and online scam, which are the most common cybersecurity issues. The study sought to examine the effect of this digital simulation design in the cybersecurity knowledge and attitude of the students. The result of the study ascertains that students exposed under simulation in the virtual world have a greater positive change in cybersecurity knowledge and attitude than their counterparts.
IT technology is a vital part of our everyday life and society. Additionally, as it is present in strategic domains like the military, healthcare or critical infrastructure, the aspect of protection, i.e. cybersecurity is of utmost importance. In recent years, the demand for cybersecurity experts is exponentially rising. Additionally, the field of cybersecurity is very much interdisciplinary and therefore requires a broad set of skills. Renowned organisations as ACM or IEEE have recognized the importance of cybersecurity experts and proposed guidelines for higher education training of such professionals. This paper presents an overview of a cybersecurity education model from the Information Systems and Information Technology perspective together with a good example and experience of the University of Maribor. The presented education model is shaped according to the guidelines by the Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education and the expectations of the Slovene industry regarding the knowledge and skills their future employees should possess.
In this paper, we propose a cybersecurity exercise system in a virtual computer environment. The human resource development for security fields is an urgent issue because of the threat of cyber-attacks, recently, is increasing, many incidents occurring, but there is a not enough security personnel to respond. Some universities and companies are conducting education using a commercial training system on the market. However, built and operates the training system is expensive, therefore difficult to use in higher education institutions and SMEs. However, to build and operates, the training system needs high cost, thus difficult to use in higher education institutions and SMEs. For this reason, we developed the CyExec: a cybersecurity exercise system consisting of a virtual computer environment using VirtualBox and Docker. We also implemented the WebGoat that is an OSS vulnerability diagnosis and learning program on the CyExec and developed an attack and defense exercise program.
This Innovate Practice Full Paper describes our experience with teaching cybersecurity topics using guided inquiry collaborative learning. The goal is to not only develop the students' in-depth technical knowledge, but also “soft skills” such as communication, attitude, team work, networking, problem-solving and critical thinking. This paper reports our experience with developing and using the Guided Inquiry Collaborative Learning materials on the topics of firewall and IPsec. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted to access the effectiveness of the developed materials and teaching methods in terms of learning outcome, attitudes, learning experience and motivation. Analysis of the survey data shows that students had increased learning outcome, participation in class, and interest with Guided Inquiry Collaborative Learning.
The need for cybersecurity knowledge and skills is constantly growing as our lives become more integrated with the digital world. In order to meet this demand, educational institutions must continue to innovate within the field of cybersecurity education and make this educational process as effective and efficient as possible. We seek to accomplish this goal by taking an existing cybersecurity educational technology and adding automated grading and assessment functionality to it. This will reduce costs and maximize scalability by reducing or even eliminating the need for human graders.
The spotlight is on cybersecurity education programs to develop a qualified cybersecurity workforce to meet the demand of the professional field. The ACM CCECC (Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges) is leading the creation of a set of guidelines for associate degree cybersecurity programs called Cyber2yr, formerly known as CSEC2Y. A task force of community college educators have created a student competency focused curriculum that will serve as a global cybersecurity guide for applied (AAS) and transfer (AS) degree programs to develop a knowledgeable and capable associate level cybersecurity workforce. Based on the importance of the Cyber2yr work; ABET a nonprofit, non-governmental agency that accredits computing programs has created accreditation criteria for two-year cybersecurity programs.
Cybersecurity competitions have been shown to be an effective approach for promoting student engagement through active learning in cybersecurity. Players can gain hands-on experience in puzzle-based or capture-the-flag type tasks that promote learning. However, novice players with limited prior knowledge in cybersecurity usually found difficult to have a clue to solve a problem and get frustrated at the early stage. To enhance student engagement, it is important to study the experiences of novices to better understand their learning needs. To achieve this goal, we conducted a 4-month longitudinal case study which involves 11 undergraduate students participating in a college-level cybersecurity competition, National Cyber League (NCL) competition. The competition includes two individual games and one team game. Questionnaires and in-person interviews were conducted before and after each game to collect the players' feedback on their experience, learning challenges and needs, and information about their motivation, interests and confidence level. The collected data demonstrate that the primary concern going into these competitions stemmed from a lack of knowledge regarding cybersecurity concepts and tools. Players' interests and confidence can be increased by going through systematic training.
A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is considered a type of network which is wireless and has no fixed infrastructure composed of a set if nodes in self organized fashion which are randomly, frequently and unpredictably mobile. MANETs can be applied in both military and civil environments ones because of its numerous applications. This is due to their special characteristics and self-configuration capability. This is due to its dynamic nature, lack of fixed infrastructure, and the no need of being centrally managed; a special type of routing protocols such as Anonymous routing protocols are needed to hide the identifiable information of communicating parties, while preserving the communication secrecy. This paper provides an examination of a comprehensive list of anonymous routing protocols in MANET, focusing their security and performance capabilities.
Malicious software, known as malware, has become urgently serious threat for computer security, so automatic mal-ware classification techniques have received increasing attention. In recent years, deep learning (DL) techniques for computer vision have been successfully applied for malware classification by visualizing malware files and then using DL to classify visualized images. Although DL-based classification systems have been proven to be much more accurate than conventional ones, these systems have been shown to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks. However, there has been little research to consider the danger of adversarial attacks to visualized image-based malware classification systems. This paper proposes an adversarial attack method based on the gradient to attack image-based malware classification systems by introducing perturbations on resource section of PE files. The experimental results on the Malimg dataset show that by a small interference, the proposed method can achieve success attack rate when challenging convolutional neural network malware classifiers.
Mobile phones have become nowadays a commodity to the majority of people. Using them, people are able to access the world of Internet and connect with their friends, their colleagues at work or even unknown people with common interests. This proliferation of the mobile devices has also been seen as an opportunity for the cyber criminals to deceive smartphone users and steel their money directly or indirectly, respectively, by accessing their bank accounts through the smartphones or by blackmailing them or selling their private data such as photos, credit card data, etc. to third parties. This is usually achieved by installing malware to smartphones masking their malevolent payload as a legitimate application and advertise it to the users with the hope that mobile users will install it in their devices. Thus, any existing application can easily be modified by integrating a malware and then presented it as a legitimate one. In response to this, scientists have proposed a number of malware detection and classification methods using a variety of techniques. Even though, several of them achieve relatively high precision in malware classification, there is still space for improvement. In this paper, we propose a text mining all repeated pattern detection method which uses the decompiled files of an application in order to classify a suspicious application into one of the known malware families. Based on the experimental results using a real malware dataset, the methodology tries to correctly classify (without any misclassification) all randomly selected malware applications of 3 categories with 3 different families each.
As malware family classification methods, image-based classification methods have attracted much attention. Especially, due to the fast classification speed and the high classification accuracy, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based malware family classification methods have been studied. However, previous studies on CNN-based classification methods focused only on improving the classification accuracy of malware families. That is, previous studies did not consider the cases that the accuracy of CNN-based malware classification methods can be decreased under the existence of adversarial attacks. In this paper, we analyze the robustness of various CNN-based malware family classification models under adversarial attacks. While adding imperceptible non-random perturbations to the input image, we measured how the accuracy of the CNN-based malware family classification model can be affected. Also, we showed the influence of three significant visualization parameters(i.e., the size of input image, dimension of input image, and conversion color of a special character)on the accuracy variation under adversarial attacks. From the evaluation results using the Microsoft malware dataset, we showed that even the accuracy over 98% of the CNN-based malware family classification method can be decreased to less than 7%.
The exponential growth rate of malware causes significant security concern in this digital era to computer users, private and government organizations. Traditional malware detection methods employ static and dynamic analysis, which are ineffective in identifying unknown malware. Malware authors develop new malware by using polymorphic and evasion techniques on existing malware and escape detection. Newly arriving malware are variants of existing malware and their patterns can be analyzed using the vision-based method. Malware patterns are visualized as images and their features are characterized. The alternative generation of class vectors and feature vectors using ensemble forests in multiple sequential layers is performed for classifying malware. This paper proposes a hybrid stacked multilayered ensembling approach which is robust and efficient than deep learning models. The proposed model outperforms the machine learning and deep learning models with an accuracy of 98.91%. The proposed system works well for small-scale and large-scale data since its adaptive nature of setting parameters (number of sequential levels) automatically. It is computationally efficient in terms of resources and time. The method uses very fewer hyper-parameters compared to deep neural networks.