Abstract:

It is evident that information has become one of the main assets of organizations, and in many cases represents the main strategic element in the fulfilment of their objectives and as a support for their activities. Organizations invest enormous amounts of time and money in creating information systems that offer them the highest productivity and quality, and it is for this reason that security related issues are gaining importance at both an international and a national level.

Security is currently considered to be a new area of engineering, and computer security engineers are those professionals that are most in demand in this area. Security deals with highly diverse areas of computer science, which are applicable to a wide range of fields such as business, scientific research, medicine, manufacturing, logistics, banking, meteorology, law and networks, among many others. Given the importance that such professionals represent for organizations, and owing to the increasing potential that information technologies are taking on in improving organizations’ productivity, ensuring their survival, and even changing their way of life (eGovernment, eCommerce, etc.), the tremendous importance of the implementation of security in our modern society is justified.

It would therefore appear logical to believe that there should be a correspondence between the importance of security, and the weight that it receives in the curricula of our universities. This paper discusses what the current situation with regard to Security is within the various sub-disciplines of computing defined in the Computing Curricula of ACM. The different proposals related to security as defined in each of these sub-disciplines are studied in detail, and the recommendations offered by each are also presented.

Keywords:

Security, ECTS, Computer Engineering, ACM curricula.