viCyber: An Intelligent Curriculum Design Tool for Cybersecurity Education

Abstract

Unauthorized access to confidential information with malicious intent has become a growing challenge to individuals, businesses and governments. Recent media reports of attempted foreign interference in the domestic politics highlights the threat to data security from both within as well as outside the country. Adequate protection of information systems urgently requires a cybersecurity-educated workforce trained using a curriculum that covers the essential skills required for different cybersecurity work roles. The demand for effective cybersecurity education has led to efforts at the national level like the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) framework to guide cybersecurity curriculum design. However, the many-to-may relationships among components of the NICE framework makes it difficult for anyone but experienced cybersecurity experts to design courses or training programs. The much needed rapid expansion of cybersecurity education depends on the ability of educators to understand and reflect in their curriculum frameworks like NICE. This poster presentation describes the design and use of viCyber, an intelligent cybersecurity course design tool, currently under development with support from the National Security Agency. The goal of this tool is to guide inexperienced instructors through the curriculum design process and provide an evaluation of their design with suggestions for possible improvements. viCyber is available as a web-based tool for trial and evaluation by the cybersecurity education community. It is hoped that the dissemination of information through this presentation will help make educators aware of this publicly available web-based tool and elicit valuable feedback from cybersecurity educators.