How to balance transparency and security in cybersecurity education

Every field of study has its challenges, and cybersecurity education faces a big one: how can educators can share detailed curricula around things like malware and cyberattacks without serving up a potential recipe book for those with ill intent?

Sensitive information shared with the wrong people in the classroom (physical or online) can fuel a malicious actor’s own educational learning curve. That’s obviously something to be avoided, but cybersecurity educators and their students still need to find a way to study concepts and use cases at the level of granularity sufficient for the real-world jobs they’re training for.

Related: Is your cybersecurity program on track?

Let’s take a closer look at how to strike the right balance in cybersecurity education.

Keeping black hats out of the classroom

The increasingly online and globally-connected nature of cybersecurity education is bringing more people to the field. That’s a good thing, but it requires a renewed focus on vetting curricula and understanding students’ interests and goals. The more we can do this, the more we guard against misuse of coursework by potential threat actors.