Security across the curriculum: using computer secu-rity to teach computer science principles

Insuring that individuals who obtain computer science degrees have a sound foundation in security principles is becoming increasingly important as the worldwide connectivity of our networks grows and the number of security incidences increases. Increasing the number of courses a computer science major is required to take by adding additional computer science courses dealing with security is not the solution, however. Instead, an organized approach to include security topics into already existing curricula (as was first proposed in ACM’s Curricula ‘91 document) is the key. This paper describes the approach taken at the United States Air Force Academy in introducing security topics at numerous points in its computer science curriculum. This approach goes far beyond briefly mentioning security at various points, pioneering the concept of using security to actually teach core computer science principles. This paper focuses in particular on changes that have been made to the Networks course required of all computer science majors which has been modified to use security to help illustrate and teach the underlying network principles.