South African computing educators’ perspectives on information security behaviour

Abstract

With the growing dependency of users on computers, technology and the internet, the protection of information and information systems is of utmost importance. Current computing graduates will become tomorrow’s users and protectors of information and information systems. It is, therefore, essential that higher education institutions provide adequate information security education to enable these graduates to protect information and related information systems. This information security education should, preferably, be a part of their formalized studies. This paper discusses the opinions and experiences of computing educators regarding the extent to which information security is currently integrated within computing curricula and the current information security behaviour of computing students and educators. A total of twenty educators, from six South African higher education institutions, all universities, voluntarily participated in this study. Results indicated that there was limited information security integration within computing curricula at these higher education institutions. This could potentially negatively impact the information security behaviour of computing graduates. However, since behaviour is complex in nature, this paper briefly suggests various factors that could positively influence the information security behaviour of computing students and should be taken into consideration by computing educators.