Towards a Holistic Interdisciplinary Education in Cybersecurity

The need for cybersecurity professionals continues to grow and education systems are responding in a variety of ways. This study focusses on the “interdisciplinarity” of cybersecurity in the light of current guidelines and frameworks that shape the growth and development of cybersecurity education and training. The study also significantly recognizes the contributions of other disciplines to the field of cybersecurity by the discussion of theories that contribute to understanding security in the context of legal, economics and criminology perspectives. A detailed discussion of the current guidelines in cybersecurity education is discussed to emphasize and indicate the changing needs and draws the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach. Finally, an extensive quantitative analysis is done to understand the existing knowledge of security behaviors and beliefs among students from technical and non-technical majors, and measure the interest fostered towards an academic pathway in cybersecurity. The results of the analysis will help understand the demand and need for a collaborative cybersecurity program in the Department of Computer Science.