Abstract
Many organisations have reported a dramatic shortage of cybersecurity skills to counteract cyberattacks. Academia and industry should be responsible for working together to investigate possibilities in closing this cybersecurity skills gap. The IT curricula of many South African universities are based on the outdated IT2008 curricular guidelines, which make no mention of cybersecurity. In order to address this increasing cybersecurity skills gap, universities offering computer-related qualifications need to adapt their curricula accordingly. This paper proposes a framework for integrating cybersecurity into IT undergraduate curricula in South Africa. As the cybersecurity needs of industry continue to evolve, the proposed framework will provide a structure that aligns IT curricula to the cybersecurity workforce needs by considering the NIST NICE framework, CSEC2017, and IT2017. Furthermore, the proposed framework discussed in this paper will serve as an academic guide for communicating cybersecurity content to address specific industry work roles. The implementation of this IT Cybersecurity Curricular Framework aims to impact the development of the cybersecurity workforce positively and reduce the cybersecurity skills gap between academia and industry.
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Futcher, L., Thomson, KL., Mbuqe, A. (2021). A Cybersecurity Curricular Framework for IT Undergraduates in South Africa. In: Wells, G., Nxozi, M., Tait, B. (eds) ICT Education. SACLA 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1518. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92858-2_11
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