Practical computer security
David W. Valentine · 2005
The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace calls upon IT professionals to help empower all Americans to secure their own connections to cyberspace as part of the National security effort. Specifically, it is a call for training the general population (meaning non-IT professionals). This paper describes a pilot syllabus for a course aimed at teaching non-computing majors the fundamentals of computer security, and so meets this call of the National Strategy. It will be offered as part of the university's General Education program, at the upper division level. We discuss the reason for the course, the selection of topics to include, the educational approach to be taken with non-technical students, and the resulting characteristics desired for our graduates.