Cybersecurity-related Curriculum for Diverse Postgraduate Cohorts: A Case Study

Cyber threats have highly increased over the last decade, including ransomware, identity stealing, etc. Ensuring the security of cyberspace is imperative and should constitute a top priority for society to promote its growth and support its sustainability. Educational organizations, worldwide, have recognized the need to educate people on cybersecurity. This need has driven educational organizations to design postgraduate cybersecurity curriculums to educate and train recent graduates and IT professionals. Having a diverse audience, with different experiences and backgrounds with regards to knowledge and practical skills, can greatly challenge the design and delivery of a cybersecurity curriculum. Moreover, the fact that blended environments are promoted, where a curriculum is delivered to both face-to-face and distance learning students, can challenge the curriculum design and delivery even further. This paper presents a case study, critically discussing the challenges in the design and delivery of an ethical hacking curriculum targeting diverse postgraduate cohorts in conventional and distance learning. Moreover, the utilized practices that have successfully addressed the challenges are discussed. The aim of this work is to assist curriculum planners and developers to deliver an enhanced teaching and learning cybersecurity environment