Hardly a month goes by without a major cybersecurity incident hitting the world’s headlines. The current damage of cybercrime and security breaches is estimated to be $6 trillion (US) annually and this is expected to grow by 15% per year in the near term. In response, demand for cybersecurity professionals has skyrocketed and current projections are there are about 3.5 million unfilled positions worldwide. Hundreds of educational institutions have responded by launching cybersecurity programs of study. In turn, ABET has responded by developing accreditation criteria for both 4-year and 2-year cybersecurity degree programs. In this presentation, we provide background about ABET accreditation and ABET’s General Criteria that provide the context for the Cybersecurity Program Criteria. We discuss the process used to create these criteria and provide a detailed look at the requirements a program must meet for accreditation.
Presenters
Dr. Lawrence G. Jones has over 50 years of experience in software development, management, research, and education. He also has over 35 years’ experience in nonprofit leadership involving accreditation of university STEM programs. Dr. Jones retired in 2013 as a Distinguished Principal Researcher at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He served a career in the US Air Force and is the former Chair of the Computer Science Department at the US Air Force Academy. He is a Fellow of ABET (the recognized authority for accreditation of college programs in engineering, computing, technology and applied science programs) and CSAB (the federation of societies supporting accreditation of undergraduate programs in computing, software engineering and data science).
David Gibson is Professor Emeritus of Computer and Cyber Science at the United States Air Force Academy. During his 34-year career in the U.S. Air Force, he worked in electronic warfare, computer security, space systems, intelligence, and cyber operations. Prior to retiring, he served as Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the Air Force Academy where he led development of the Academy’s cyber education, training, and research programs. He was a member of the Joint Taskforce on Cybersecurity Education and co-author of Cybersecurity Curricula 2017. Since 2000, he has volunteered as an ABET program evaluator and is currently on the Executive Committee of ABET’s Computing Accreditation Commission. He received his PhD in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University.