NSA National Cybersecurity Curriculum Program
One of the goals of the National Security Agency (NSA) is to advance the state of cybersecurity. Building a cyber-skilled workforce is critical to the continued security of the Nation, across social, economic, and political domains. Toward this goal, the National Cybersecurity Curriculum Program aims to:
- Develop national cybersecurity curriculum that maps to the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework to be made publicly available for educational institutions preparing cybersecurity graduates for the future workforce.
- Establish and implement a dissemination plan that includes an annual Cyber Education Workshop to showcase curriculum and allow cybersecurity educators to convene and discuss strategies for building and sustaining curriculum in cybersecurity.
- Build a Cyber Cube that includes a dynamic library of cybersecurity curriculum & a community of cybersecurity educators committed to sustaining it.
In the 2017 fiscal year, NSA awarded 54 grants to universities to build courses and modules in high need cybersecurity areas. Sample topic areas include: SCADA; Secure Software/Secure System Design; Privacy, Strategy, Ethics, Risk; Introduction to Security/Cybersecurity Principles; Networking; Wireless/Mobile; Competency Based Projects (ex. NICE Challenges); Cryptography; Forensics; Risk management; National laws, regulations and policies; Cyber threats and vulnerabilities; Hardware and software reverse-engineering; and HCI and usable security.
Particular emphasis is on developing curriculum that is...
* Effective - instructors are using formal instructional models that develop curriculum that include learning outcomes following Bloom's Taxonomy and appropriately aligned assessment and instructional strategies
* Engaging - include hands-on interactive activities
* Usable and Adoptable across institutions.
A variety of courses in the following categories are accessible via an online Cybersecurity Curriculum Library:
- Intro to Security / Cyber Security Principles
- Secure Software / Secure System Design
- Networking
- Wireless / Mobile
- SCADA - Supervisory control and data acquisition systems
- Privacy / Strategy / Ethics / Risk
- Cryptography
- Forensics
- Internet of Things
- Competency Based / Other
CLICK BELOW to visit the “Cybersecurity Labs and Resources Knowledge-base” (CLARK) for more information about accessing the online curriculum. You can also view a short video about CLARK - see below.
*** Please be advised that CLARK does not support the Internet Explorer browser at this time.
