Bridge Building - Cybersecurity Curriculum Guidelines for All
Making cyberspace secure and trustworthy is a critical and multi-faceted challenge confronting society, and provisioning a capable cybersecurity workforce is the capacitating factor. In response to this need, educational programs have been growing at the post-secondary level and are now growing down into K-12. A handful of states are early adopters and are integrating cybersecurity content into their K-12 computer science and/or CTE standards and are offering curriculum pathways in cybersecurity. The breadth, depth, and implementation varies by state. For example, some states have developed standards for high school cybersecurity courses, i.e., Virginia, Texas, and Florida, while other states have chosen to incorporate cybersecurity into their high school computer science standards, i.e., New York, Maryland, and Michigan. Aside from state efforts, several school districts in other states are acting locally by integrating cybersecurity courses into their curriculum. Common sense - but challenging - questions from these educators include: 1) What should we be teaching to prepare students for furthering their cybersecurity education in college? 2) Should cybersecurity be taught in computer science, CTE or both? 3) What influence do certifications have for my students, my program, and/or my school? 4) To what extent will these efforts provision a capable cybersecurity workforce? This presentation has three goals: first to share a cybersecurity curriculum guidelines that has been developed, second to consider the cybersecurity curriculum guidelines in the context of the early adoption of cybersecurity into K-12 and the questions above, and 3) to analyze methods for building bridges among these various K-12 cybersecurity education initiatives to create an infrastructure that supports large scale, efficient, equitable integration of cybersecurity into high schools in the United States.