Various cybersecurity curricular guidelines were announced during the last several years. These are the results from common efforts of many organizations, universities, professional bodies, practitioners, etc. This paper considers fundamental cybersecurity knowledge and its presentation in order to help educators to prepare new educational programs. In recent years, many universities have been included cybersecurity as an important element at different levels of their education programs. Various courses and completed programs were developed. They are based on the basic recommendations provided by a number of cybersecurity frameworks and educational guidelines, produced from different professional organizations, academic and practitioners. As different frameworks emphasize different topics, a complex view on the fundaments in cybersecurity is needed. Cyber Security Body of Knowledge (CyBOK), version 1.0, announced at the end of 2019, presents such a comprehensive understanding of foundational cybersecurity knowledge and provide it into several main categories and a number of knowledge areas [1]. In this paper, we discuss the main categories and knowledge areas recognized by CyBOK, and their correspondence to the educational requirements at university level. The last ones are best represented through the CSEC2017 curriculum [3].
education in the field [13]. In a number of countries, the development of national cybersecurity programs has begun [14], [16].
Many project and common efforts of different groups of educators,
practitioners, national and professional organizations led to the publication of
a number of frameworks and guidelines in cybersecurity. Widespread among
them are the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework, published by the U.S.
National Initiative on Cybersecurity Education (NICE) [12], the National Centers
of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD) Designation Program
Guidance [
Several cybersecurity curricula were also announced. The Cybersecurity
Curricular Guideline CSEC2017 presents the result of the work of several
organizations - ACM, IEEE Computer Society, AIS SIGSEC, and IFIP WG 11
[
The Cybersecurity: A Generic Reference Curriculum is “the result of the work
of multinational team of volunteer academics and researchers drawn from 17
nations associated with Partnership for Peace Consortium (PfPC) Emerging
Security Challenges Working Group” [
Among the various cybersecurity frameworks and guidelines, CSEC2017
[
Due to the rapid development of cybersecurity, the basic knowledge in this
field is not well structured, yet. Plenty of books, scientific and white papers, blogs,
etc. presents different aspects of the field [
Cyber Security Body of Knowledge (CyBOK) is trying to fill this gap
exploring and systemizing the knowledge obtained from the existing resources
(papers, technical documents, standards, reports, etc.) that can assist cybersecurity
education. As CyBOK v.1.0 identifies definitions, explanation, examples in
cybersecurity area, it complements other curricula recommendations and assists
educators in creating new cybersecurity educational units.
While most of the above presented documents and frameworks, especially
curricula guidelines, aim to develop cybersecurity educational programs, the
main goal of the Cyber Security Body of Knowledge (CyBOK) [
All categories consist of four knowledge areas, except Software and Platform Security category, which consists of three.
Security management systems and organizational security controls are the focus of the first category - Human, Organizational and Regulatory aspects. Formulating four substantial knowledge areas - Risk Management and Governance, Law and Regulation, Human Factors and Privacy and Online Rights, this category addresses the security issues at the organizational level. Also is addressed the application of instruments like procedures, standards, organizational policies to mitigate risks.
The second category Attack and Defense refers to more technical issues and analyses. The technical aspects of computer attacks and malicious software and hardware are discussed in Malware and Attack Technologies knowledge area. The next knowledge area Adversarial Behaviors presents specific aspects of cybercrime such as behavior of the attackers, their motives and methods used and cybercrime relation with economics and society. The technical aspects of operational security (system management, security monitoring) and how to respond to the incident management are covered by Security Operations & Incident Management. The last knowledge area in this category – Forensics, concerns the work with digital evidence of security events and crimes.
Software engineering and security aspects are in the focus of Software and Platform Security category. The role of the security in the system development life cycle is marked in Secure Software Lifecycle knowledge area. Specific programming practices leading to security faults and techniques improving software security are the subject of knowledge area Software Security. In addition, particular issues concerning security of web application are Web and Mobile Security.
The Systems security category introduce fundamental concepts of cryptography, algorithms, and proof techniques through the Cryptography knowledge area. The other KA - Operating Systems and Virtualization Security presents the protection mechanism to ensure the security at operation systems level. The case security issues of different large-scale distributed systems were discussed in more details the Distributed Systems Security area. The Authentication, Authorization & Accountability knowledge area focuses on the identification management discussing technics and technologies for user identification and user authorization.
Network Security, Hardware Security, Cyber-Physical Systems Security and Physical Layer Security knowledge areas belong to the Infrastructure security category. Each of these four knowledge areas cover security issues at different sides of the physical infrastructure – hardware security, different computational devices, networking and telecommunications protocols, etc.
The chosen topics demonstrate not only the breath of scope CyBOK, but also the significant efforts to finding a balance between the more rigorous academic forms and the practical orientation, demanded by the industry.
Despite the presenting variety of topics, this is not the last version of the
CyBOK and the process for change requests have already started [
As the nineteen CyBOK knowledge areas are organized into five categories these categories could be easily used for the correspondence with the eight knowledge areas of CSEC2017 curricula. This comparison is presented in Table 1. Component security Connection security
Infrastructure Security Human security Human, Organizational Organizational security and Regulatory Aspects Societal security Software Security Web & Mobile Security Secure Software Design & Development Security Operations & Incident Management Network Security Hardware Security Cyber-Physical Systems Security Physical Layer Security Human Factors Law & Regulation Privacy & Online Rights Risk Management & Governance
Even at such high-level, the parallel, presented in Table 1, demonstrates that
CyBOK categories and knowledge areas could be successfully used as a basis for
comparison with CSEC 2017 knowledge areas [
As the CSEC2017 knowledge areas are further broken down into knowledge units, these units could be used for the next step of the compliance. The topics in CSEC2017, present more detailed pieces of knowledge (Attacks, Malware, Forensics, Cryptography, etc.) and they could be used for finding correspondence within the content of CyBOK knowledge areas. In some cases, the CSES2017 essentials, listed at the beginning of each KA could be used to find parallels, as they present the essential concepts presented in units and modules.
We applied this approach in the case of CSEC2017 knowledge area Component Security - it does not match directly to any of the CyBOK categories. Instead, we could find the correspondence with the Security Operations & Incident Management, which is a part of Attacks and Defenses Category, as well with particular elements from other areas. For example, supply chain management (one of the essentials of Component security) is discussed in CyBOK within the Adversarial Behaviors area.
It can be seen that CSEC 2017 content is fully addressed by the CyBOK knowledge areas. The topics are covered in a balanced manner. In the case, where specific knowledge is needed, the CyBOK presents the latest research in the field. For example, in Cryptography contemporary theoretical results in quantum algorithms and calculations are examined.
Not only technical, but also human, organizational and law aspects are explored in both documents. The CyBOK provides an international perspective on regulatory requirements and online rights, but it lists noted technologies for protecting data and user privacy. In this way, it draws attention to wider sociotechnical view and covers the issues, discussed in the last tree CSEC2017 areas.
In this paper, we explore the CyBOK approach for knowledge areas in cybersecurity and show its applicability to educational process. As a comprehensive store of established knowledge sets, including papers, documents and many other references, it is the best starting point for universities and other academic institutions when creating their educational programs. The presented accordance with CSEC2017 will assists educators in preparing courses and other teaching materials. For all organizations, it could be a good foundation to enhance their own IT security management.
This paper is partially supported by the National Scientific Program “Information and Communication Technologies for a Single Digital Market in Science, Education and Security (ICTinSES)”, financed by the Ministry of Education and Science. 12. Newhouse, William et al., National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity
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