ITEC 545: Cyber Security Education

Graduate course for educators

Department of Information Technology
Radford University, Virginia
Partially funded by NSA MEPP grant# H98230-15-1-0210

Summary

Online course for 1 or 3 credits

1 hour meeting each week (time
decided after the first meeting
evenings or weekends)
No IT/Computer Science prerequisites

Tuition waiver and stipend for 1 credit

through NSA grant for a limited number of
educators (first come first awarded);
Laptop/Desktop required any operating
system.
Graduate course credit from Radford
University

Overview
This course is for educators from middle, high school or community college who want to do one
or more of the following:

Start a security program formally or informally but arent sure how;

Introduce security into existing classes;
Get an introduction and become conversant with fundamental IT and security concepts
and terms;
Get a perspective on the diversity of careers in cyber security;
Get a deep understanding of the security and privacy issues of social networking sites;
Get hands on experience with hacking and problem solving in IT;
Inspire and mentor students who want to participate in cyber security contests such as
the Air Force Associations CyberPatriot;

Course topics
The course will cover and provide educators with everything they need to provide a broad
introduction to cyber security for their students. Security will be taught in the context of social
networking and mobile phones contexts that students and teachers can easily relate with.

Specific topics
a. Need for cyber security understanding the security and privacy issues and threats to
infrastructure;
b. Diversity of careers why cyber security expertise is not limited to only IT professionals:
guest lectures from law enforcement, government and industry;
c. Curriculum resources on cyber security education: How existing resources can be easily
incorporated for students to self-study
Course material examples: Radfords K-12 curriculum and modules
Lab resources available (Examples: Deterlab, EMULab etc)
d. Setting up a lab to conduct cyber security experiments.
e. Basics concepts of cyber security introduced around the context of social networking and
mobile phones
i. Security goals

ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.

Vulnerabilities, threats and exploits

Anatomy of an attack (hacking)
Security analysis how secure is your mobile phone?
Security mechanisms: cryptography, application and network security
Coaching for success in cyber defense contests.

Assessment Measures
Assessment will be through projects, short reports and/or discussions. Examples include:

Report surveying cyber security resources;

Projects involving hacking into a social networking site (site created at Radford);
Setting up a security lab and using existing lab resources;
Performing a security analysis (how secure?) of a mobile device;
Harden a computational network.

Interested? Next Steps

To register for the course students must register as non-degree seeking graduate
students at Radford University. Application form here:
https://www.applyweb.com/radg/index.ftl.
o There is a fee of $50 for application that must be paid upfront.
o A stipend of $450 will be applied to a limited number of educators (about 15 on a
first applied basis. The amount will be credited to your account once you are
registered as a student. This will cover the fees for 1 credit ($355). The rest $95 will
be sent to your address as a stipend.

Email: Dr. Prem Uppuluri (puppuluri@radford.edu) , Coordinator of the Cyber Security

Program for more information.