The project from Boise State University (BSU), a designated Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, proposes to increase the capacity of the United States higher education enterprise to produce security data scientists and cybersecurity professionals with analytic skills. This project seeks to build a capacity in security data science education by integrating data science into a cybersecurity curriculum. This project seeks to address the lack in curriculum materials on security data analytics, and the shortage of faculty that are sufficiently qualified to teach security data science. The materials will blend processes in data sciences, security problems, perspectives of adversaries, and principles of academic course design. Dissemination via an open collaborative repository, faculty development workshops and webinars, presentations and tutorials at professional conferences will open-up pathways for educators around the nation to help them integrate data science topics into their cybersecurity curriculum.
The first objective of the project is to develop innovative curriculum materials on security data science by integrating data science workflow, security and privacy problems, the adversary's perspective of security, and inquiry-based learning into hands-on practices. Four self-contained course modules will be created, covering data science for software vulnerability prediction, malicious user detection in social networks, malware detection, and intrusion detection. These modules can be used in existing cybersecurity courses, such as Software Security and Network Security or combined to create a new standalone course on security data analytics. The second objective is to develop an open collaborative repository for the security data science community to host the proposed curriculum materials (e.g., lecture notes, data sets, tools, and lab exercises), and serve the community as a collaborative environment for educators to exchange ideas, contribute new contents, and share resources. The third goal is to hold national faculty development workshops on security data science. The workshops will bring together various stakeholders, such as researchers, educators, industry practitioners, and policy makers, to discuss most recent progresses and needs in security data science and how to integrate data science into specific security courses.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
