Abstract:

With the ever-increasing dependence on e-services, an understanding of network security issues is a vital component to secure such e-services. Due to the breadth of the topic, traditional network security courses tend to focus on few aspects, which may undermine the “big picture” view of security scene and hence results in lower overall understanding of the topic by students. This paper presents a holistic approach to teaching network security that aims to provide the students with wide perspective of the network security issues. The approach features the use of many hand-on exercises to deepen the understanding of the topics covered and increase the students’ interest. Moreover, professional skills (e.g. communication skills and impact of technical solution on local and global levels) are also incorporated in the course. Tackling and developing these professional skills is a requirement for accreditation for some programs that undergo through accreditation process (e.g. ABET). The paper provides a blueprint of undergraduate course on network security that outlines topical coverage, described hand-on experiments to enhance students understanding of theory portion, provides suggestion of suitable educational software to carry these experiments, and discusses ways to integrate professional skills into the course delivery.