A Survey Of Serious Games For Cybersecurity Education And Training, Winston Anthony Hill Jr., Mesafint Fanuel, Xiaohong Yuan, Jinghua Zhang, Sajad Sajad

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Serious games can challenge users in competitive and entertaining ways. Educators have used serious games to increase student engagement in cybersecurity education. Serious games have been developed to teach students various cybersecurity topics such as safe online behavior, threats and attacks, malware, and more. They have been used in cybersecurity training and education at different levels. Serious games have targeted different audiences such as K-12 students, undergraduate and graduate students in academic institutions, and professionals in the cybersecurity workforce. In this paper, we provide a survey of serious games used in cybersecurity education and training. We categorize these games into …

Proposal For A Joint Cybersecurity And Information Technology Management Program, Christopher Simpson, Debra Bowen, William Reid, James Juarez

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cybersecurity and Information Technology Management programs have many similarities and many similar knowledge, skills, and abilities are taught across both programs. The skill mappings for the NICE Framework and the knowledge units required to become a National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education contain many information technology management functions. This paper explores one university’s perception on how a joint Cybersecurity and Information Technology Management program could be developed to upskill students to be work force ready.

Adversarial Thinking: Teaching Students To Think Like A Hacker, Frank Katz

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Today’s college and university cybersecurity programs often contain multiple laboratory activities on various different hardware and software-based cybersecurity tools. These include preventive tools such as firewalls, virtual private networks, and intrusion detection systems. Some of these are tools used in attacking a network, such as packet sniffers and learning how to craft cross-site scripting attacks or man-in-the-middle attacks. All of these are important in learning cybersecurity. However, there is another important component of cybersecurity education – teaching students how to protect a system or network from attackers by learning their motivations, and how they think, developing the students’ “abilities to …

Mapping Knowledge Units Using A Learning Management System (Lms) Course Framework, Casey Rackley

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes of using a Learning Management System (LMS) course as a framework for mapping the Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD) 2019 Knowledge Units (KU) to college courses. The experience shared herein will be useful to faculty who are interested in performing the mapping and applying for CAE-CDE designation.

Cybersecurity Education Employing Experiential Learning, Travis Lowe, Casey Rackley

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a curriculum design that employs Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory stages and Kolb’s Learning Styles in four consecutive class sessions. The challenge each class is to present students with perplexing and often frustrating network problems that someday might be encountered on the job. By using Kolb’s theory, students address those problems from the perspective of each learning style, while passing through each phase of the learning cycle. As a result, students gain stronger cognitive thinking skills and hands-on troubleshooting skills in preparation for work as network administrators or cybersecurity analysts.

Study Of Physical Layer Security And Teaching Methods In Wireless Communications, Zhijian Xie, Christopher Horne

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

In most wireless channels, the signals propagate in all directions. For the communication between Alice and Bob, an Eavesdropper can receive the signals from both Alice and Bob as far as the Eavesdropper is in the range determined by the transmitting power. Through phased array antenna with beam tracking circuits or cooperative iteration, the signals are confined near the straight line connecting the positions of Alice and Bob, so it will largely reduce the valid placement of an Eavesdropper. Sometimes, this reduction can be prohibitive for Eavesdropper to wiretap the channel since the reduced space can be readily protected. Two …

Evaluating Two Hands-On Tools For Teaching Local Area Network Vulnerabilities, Ariana Brown, Jinsheng Xu, Xiaohong Yuan

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

According to the Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, Local Area Network (LAN) access is the top vector for insider threats and misuses. It is critical for students to learn these vulnerabilities, understand the mechanisms of exploits, and know the countermeasures. The department of Computer Science at North Carolina A&T State University designed two different educational tools that help students learn ARP Spoofing Attacks, which is the most popular attack on LAN. The first tool, called Hacker’s Graphical User Interface (HGUI), is a visualization tool that demonstrates ARP Spoofing Attack with real time animation. The second tool is a hands-on (HandsOn) …

Ssetgami: Secure Software Education Through Gamification, Hector Suarez, Hooper Kincannon, Li Yang

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Since web browsers have become essential to accomplishing everyday tasks, developing secure web applications has become a priority in order to protect user data, corporate databases and critical infrastructure against cyber-crimes . This research presents a game-like (gamification) approach to teach key concepts and skills on how to develop secure web applications. Gamification draws on motivational models, one of psychological theories. Gamification design has great potential over traditional education where we often find students demotivated and lecturers failing to engage them in learning activities. This research created game-like learning modules to teach top vulnerabilities and countermeasures for these top vulnerabilities …

Planning And Implementing A Successful Nsa-Nsf Gencyber Summer Cyber Academy, Bryson R. Payne, Tamirat Abegaz, Keith Antonia

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The GenCyber program is jointly sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help faculty and cybersecurity experts provide summer cybersecurity camp experiences for K-12 students and teachers. The main objective of the program is to attract, educate, and motivate a new generation of young men and women to help address the nationwide shortage of trained cybersecurity professionals. The curriculum is flexible and centers on ten cybersecurity first principles. Currently, GenCyber provides cyber camp options for three types of audiences: students, teachers, and a combination of both teachers and students. In 2016, over 120 …

Teaching Security Of Internet Of Things In Using Raspberrypi, Oliver Nichols, Li Yang, Xiaohong Yuan

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The Internet of Things (IoTs) is becoming a reality in today’s society. The IoTs can find its application in multiple domains including healthcare, critical infrastructure, transportation, and home and personal use. It is important to teach students importance and techniques that are essential in protecting IoTs. We design a series of hands-on labs in a smart home setting, which can exercise attack and protection of IoTs. Our hands-on labs use a Raspberry Pi and several diverse smart things that communicate through Z-Wave technology. Using this environment, students can operate a home automation system and learn security concepts by performing these …

Teaching Static Call Analysis To Detect Anomalous Software Behavior, Jordan Shropshire, Philip Menard

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Malicious code detection is a critical part of any cyber security operation. Typically, the behavior of normal applications is modeled so that deviations from normal behavior can be identified. There are multiple approach to modeling good behavior but the most common approach is to observe applications’ system call activity. System calls are messages passed between user space applications and their underlying operating systems. The detection of irregular system call activity signals the presence of malicious software behavior. This method of malware-detection has been used successfully for almost two decades. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to cover this concept at the …