Developing cybersecurity skills in intermediate programming courses

Abstract

For most electrical and computer engineering students intermediate programming is a required course. Typical topics taught in intermediate programming are advanced array operations, reading data from files, writing data to files, string conversions, string manipulations, pointers, searching for a text string, sorting of data into alphabetical order and numerical methods. To motivate students instructors should create learning experiences that the student can relate to for example by incorporating popular culture into the teaching materials. Judicious choice of teaching material can spell the difference between engaging or not engaging the interest of the student. One method for improving student engagement would be to provide evidence that they are learning a skill that will in the long run be useful to them in some way. Many cybersecurity concepts can be introduced and learned using techniques suitable for intermediate programming classes.