Designing a New Cyber Security Course by Dissecting Recent Cyber Breaches

Recent high-profile cyber breaches such as the Target breach (2014) and the Anthem breach (2015) indicate that cyberattack is a clear threat nationwide. However, there are growing mismatches between industry needs and education provided by universities and colleges. In this paper, we present a newly designed cybersecurity course by dissecting recent cyber security breaches. This is a case-study based course, where cases come from the recent real-world cyber security attacks including the Target breach, the Anthem breach, a 300Gbps DDoS attack and others. Students will look into the details of these attacks and learn how these attacks happened from the beginning to the end. For each case study, students are expected to analyze the case study materials and prepare for the in-class discussion. Through guided discussion and hands-on lab assignments, students will explore various cyber security attack techniques, defense mechanisms and best practices. The evaluation results show that the course is very popular among students and received high evaluation results.