Improving education in universities on information security / IT

How to improve the process of preparing university students in the areas of information security?
An article for discussion, suggestions and constructive criticism.

Problems of preparing students, the need for their retraining, the obsolescence of knowledge, etc. rose more than once. Moreover, they were raised by both the employers and the students themselves. Leave this behind the brackets of the article.

The issues of staffing universities, the adequacy of the level of wages and financing of technical support will also be left behind.

From the initial data - the university in the region, students of the specialty 10.05.01 (090301.65), or related areas, are several “young, enterprising and caring” teachers.
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What we want

Define the goal. Goals must be real and achievable.
The main objectives, in our opinion, are as follows:

1. to give a comprehensive understanding of what and why is necessary (to get away from the problem “this theorem is needed to prove another remarkable theorem!”);
2. stimulate self-education;
3. create the possibility of participation in a large project in different positions (with internal competition, etc.).

There is something to offer - write.

How and why

For goal number 1

Here everything is more or less clear. Honestly and, whenever possible, objectively, we tell all the way from the end [what is necessary at the exit] to the beginning [what we do here and now]:

• existing / prospective threats and / or market demands;
• techniques and technologies used to identify and neutralize threats, existing solutions / products;
• technology stacks, their applicability, features;
• basic technology and skills;
• assignments for the curriculum.

For goal number 2

It is clear that we want, but it is not always clear how to achieve this. Individual approach and all that, but I would like to make some “how to”, which will be useful not only for us, but also for colleagues:

• introduce a competitive element, when only additional, albeit small, effort from a student can give an advantage;
• to encourage participation in external events, when it is necessary to “protect the honor of the university”, etc .;
• advise good books that give knowledge and do not discourage reading (even despite the volume, for example, Tanenbaum).

For goal number 3

“Megaprojects” are large projects with clear goals and objectives, the implementation of which requires a large number of man-hours, different technologies, an almost endless process of improvements, optimization and improvement is possible.
Such a large project is useful for the university:

• topics for publications and presentations at conferences;
• groundwork for term papers and dissertations;
• interest of students in the practical application of their work / knowledge.

And for the learning process:

• Students are offered a variety of tasks - subtasks of the project - as control / coursework / theses;
• students are introduced to the design / design / project management methodologies;
• a good example of the decomposition of a large task into separate subtasks;
• subtasks can be implemented by different students / groups to create a competition;
• a student, choosing from various subtasks of one project, the most interesting for him, self-actualizes better, finds “his vocation” faster;
• the need to interact with other project participants develops communicative properties.

Possible examples of projects: citation index of scientific articles, anti-plagiarism.