Equity of Cybersecurity in the Education System: High Schools, Undergraduate, Graduate and Post-Graduate Studies.

Copyright © 2021 Joseph O. Esin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  03/23/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2012-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2011-9 (e)

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Distinguishing Guide

Author’s Commitment

Intended Audience

Preamble

Equity of Cybersecurity in Education

Foundation of Cybersecurity

Academic Professors’, Instructors’, and Educators’ Operatives

Equity in Cybersecurity Education Algorithm

Culture of Instructional Delivery

Philosophy of Student Learning Outcomes

Significance of Course Learning Outcomes

Student Learning Outcomes in Cybersecurity Course Offerings

Structure of the Course Offerings

Five Funneling Courses: High School through Postgraduate Studies

Course Descriptions: Five Funneling Courses with Related CLO and SLO

Course Offerings: Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity

Graduate (MSc) and Postgraduate (PhD) Studies in Cybersecurity

Formation of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies

Importance of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies

Course Offerings: Graduate and Postgraduate Studies

References

Examinations Bank

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I am immensely grateful to my father, Worthy Maurice Akuda Okon Esin; my mother, Mrs. Felicia Nkoyo Eyo Esin; my paternal grandfather, Chief Esin Akuda Abasi; my paternal grandmother, Madam Afiong U. Abasi; my maternal grandfather, Chief Eyo A. Ulliong; and my maternal grandmother, Madam Iqwo A. Ekpa. I also would like to extend a special thank-you to Chief Clement E. Anthony, Professor Joseph A. Asor, Professor Emmanuel N. Ngwang, Professor Lester C. Newman, Professor Glenell Lee-Pruitt, Professor Benson Kariuki, Professor Tyson McMillan, Professor Jane LeClair, Dr. Lisa G. Lang, Dr. Felix M. Ekanem, John A. Ozo, Dr. Moses A. Agana, Joseph E. Ukpong, Prince O. Ana, Victor A. Rom, Victor B. Uno, Sunday B. Akan, Ekwere D. Ekwere, and Nicholas N. Edet for their sustained support and assistance. Special thanks are extended to all my family members, to Udung Esin, AFI-UDA, to the Uda group of villages, and to the Mbo and Oron communities for their unrelenting support.

Introduction

Distinguishing Guide

I must admit, cyberthreats, cyberattacks, and breaches of organizations’ resources have outgrown every other risk factor faced by public and private organizations, institutions of higher education, and global security personnel. I unassertively appeal to academic professors, instructors, and educators to redouble their efforts with determination, commitment, and the willingness to accept the responsibility of establishing collaborative alliances with high schools, colleges, and universities to support, nurture, and promote equity of cybersecurity in education systems in different subject areas, including computer science, computer information systems, management information security, criminal justice, biology, and chemistry. The perils of cyberthreats, cyberattacks, unauthorized use, hacking and cracking, and data breaches are proliferating on every device connected to the internet and in every organization’s secure storage center. Armed with ongoing indiscretion surrounding the use of the true-to-life but frightful internet for network connections, data storage, transmission, and communication in private and public organizations, higher education enterprises are strongly urged to restrain from adopting a lethargic byzantine approach to thwart collaborative efforts needed to battle existing looming threats of cybersecurity by advancing with aggressive steps and a well-structured plan of action to protect against, defend against, and eradicate the underlying forces of cybercrimes, cyberthreats, and cyberattacks against vulnerable, innocent citizens. Cybersecurity is an art of intellectual confrontation, utilizing the utmost in human intellectual ability in the battle zone, and it helps to place maximum responsibility on higher education administrators, professors, instructors, and educators for reorganizing most segments of their course offerings with singular, worldwide, user-friendly, unrestricted educational equipment to train the new generation. To gain expertise in cybercrimes, cyberthreats, cyberattacks, social engineering, and hacking is a long-term undertaking and requires continuing education from the fundamentals through graduate studies. Skill and expertise to battle cybersecurity threats must start by adopting equity in cybersecurity education as a fundamental point of reference, such as in high school through postgraduate programs.

Most professor, instructors, and educators graduated prior to the emergence of internet mayhem and cybersecurity, and prior to the era of course learning outcomes (CLO) and student learning outcomes (SLO). Components of student learning outcomes must include evidence-based practices of instruction style, methodology, and the use of assessment information, organized to meet the needs of students, satisfy the expectations of course offerings, meet program goals, provide measurable assessment tools, give feedback relative to academic performance and teaching effectiveness, and create an institutional mission, purpose, and philosophy. Cybersecurity is a challenging discipline involving rigorous algorithms; hence, course learning outcomes must each involve a self-justifying mechanism aiming at reinforcing professors’ and educators’ agreement to accept students into the academic program, ready and prepared to stimulate positive interactions in and out of the classroom, provide constructive and passive feedback, encourage teamwork among students, and implement different techniques to encourage active learning endeavors so students may become self-directed and independent critical thinkers.

Equity in cybersecurity education must be organized to provide an instructional, step-by-step approach to empower professors, instructors, and learners to face this swiftly growing threat to innocent citizens. Perpetrators of cyberattacks have expanded their sophisticated strategies to include various facilities, hacking and cracking into private and public financial data and other information using cyberwarfare, ransomware, and malware to intimidate and sabotage the landscape of the global community. Our private and public transmission and communication systems are unrestricted and without boundaries; the integration of mobile technology and electronic communication has increased, serving as host to more cyberattacks and cybercrimes, the perpetrators of which are sophisticated, organized, and often fully aware of the facilities they intend to target.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the only unchallenged, obvious, all-inclusive concern is the health-care security of vulnerable private citizens. Notwithstanding world citizens’ privacy, medical doctors, allied health-care professionals, national leaders, state governors, mayors, and local government representatives have emerged as the most effective, efficient, dependable, defensive, and offensive leaders in the battle against this world pandemic, a shattering episode. However, the pandemic seems to be girded by scriptural and mystical realities, as seen when analyzed mathematically; the COVID-19 pandemic (C = 100, 0 =79, V = 5, 1 = 1, D = 500; add these figures together to get 685. Subtract 19 from 685, and you get 666 [Revelation 13:18]) has brought the entire global community into challenging times marked by uncertain disorders amid intriguing questions that cause superpowers, middle powers, lower powers, and zero powers—First World, Second World, Third World, Fourth World, and Zero World nations—to remain humble and unassuming, untiringly acknowledging the glory of God’s creation. God pronounced his glory, his wonders, and his blessings upon the worldly kingdom that he created (Job 38:18). God did not declare his servant Job innocent or guilty; hence, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we must continue to work together, pray together, and refrain from declaring all God’s dedicated and consecrated families on earth innocent or guilty.

Nations that are firmly engrained with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with long-range, short-range, and no-range ballistic missiles that act like labor-saving-mechanical appliances such as washing machines, toasters, and photocopy machines, contain push buttons which give these leaders the unique and unprecedented opportunity to push just a button and have the inflict great devastation upon vulnerable innocent global citizens. Leaders with nuclear weapons seem determined to do everything humanly possible to destroy entire nations or regions that attempt to acquire nuclear weapons. Where are the nuclear missile buttons now that the COVID-19 pandemic is ringing the doorbell? COVID-19 operates on an exclusive agenda, one that cannot be changed or rescheduled, and in aberration of the new world order, demanding total obedience and submission to God’s last pronouncement across the globe. In compliance with the new world order, global communities, including villages, cities, counties, local regions, states, and national organizations, are urged to assume equal responsibility for the reorganization and restructuring of functional rehabilitation by approving matching budgets for establishing well-suited pandemic hospitals, health-care facilities with well-matched medical equipment and supplies, and educational systems with well-suited instructional equipment and learning tools that are parallel to national military weapons budgets.

In light of President John F. Kennedy’s assertion that you should ask what you can do for your country, not what your country can do for you, today, the COVID-19 pandemic is ringing each nation’s doorbell. World leaders are charged with doing what they can do for their countries, that is, to become effective, efficient, dependable, defensive, and offensive commanding officers who place their priority on a substantive increase in the budgets for education, health care, and the military. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the only unchallenged and all-inclusive concerns are the global health-care security of vulnerable private citizens and the fact that education systems all over the world have been closed with the learning process obstructed. I must admit, the health-care professionals and other frontline responders we have seen rise to the challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic are unquestionably the direct products