How To Succeed in Cyberspace

Cyberspace is a very real man-made environment. Like any physical realm, while it offers potential for progress and benefits, it also offers opportunities for misconduct, and cyber criminals and cyber terrorists are continually searching out weaknesses in the defences that have been erected against them. There is one weakness that is pervasive across society: our individual lack of awareness, and of how to protect ourselves and our organisations against cyber attack. This paper reports on an EU funded project called SUCCEED (Shaping University Curricula to Critical Infrastructure Employer Needs) which seeks to reduce that vulnerability through education; specifically, we want to advise Higher Education Institutions of measures by which curricula can be augmented to ensure that all graduates have an appropriate level of cyber savvy. The paper’s structure reflects the project’s straightforward approach: first we identified what is needed in terms of knowledge and understanding of how to be protected in cyberspace; second we examined current provision (primarily to identify gaps, but also to refer to best-practice); third we will outline recommendations based on our findings from the first and second phases; and fourth we will have these recommendations validated by relevant stakeholders (including representatives from industry, government organisations and academia) in order to distil our conclusions, which will be disseminated and exploited further as final contributions of the project. This paper presents current progress of the SUCCEED project, in particular the results and findings obtained from the first two phases of the project. This is a relatively modest project, and will not claim to provide a definitive solution. However, we believe it can provide an important first step towards an enrichment of curricula that will better prepare graduates to cope with the dangers and risks from terrorists and cyber criminals in the digital future they will all participate in. Only thus can they SUCCEED in cyberspace, by staying safe and secure in the digital realm – through education.