Security-Related Research and Projects in Computing Promote Student Awareness of Security Issues

Security informatics represents a paradigm shift in university curricula in computing. In order to meet this challenge we will require a systemic curriculum change beyond the usual local course and program changes that have successfully handled smaller technological advances and shifts in the past. One of the novel approaches we use to teach information security at Pace University is to introduce security-related topics, research, and projects into our existing CSIS courses. We teach our masters and doctoral students how to conduct research and write dissertations in a number of areas of computing. Also, our student project teams at both the graduate and undergraduate levels are accustomed to developing real-world computer information systems for actual customers. In recent years, and especially since 9/11, we not only direct more of our faculty research toward security issues but also encourage more securityrelated student research and supervise more security-related student projects, as well as devoting more lessons to security topics in our courses. This paper gives an overview of our novel approach to teaching information security awareness through our research and projects.