Cybersecurity job roles and responsibilities constantly evolve due to technological advancements, complex infrastructure, and increasing cybersecurity threats and regulations. As a result, organizations require a highly skilled and experienced cybersecurity workforce in both the public and private sectors. Many colleges and universities offer…

Gamification is a term used to describe the art of taking a process or a task and making it into a game. Using games as a way to make mundane tasks or necessary lessons more fun is used in many aspects of life. Parents often use games to teach children tasks, and teachers use games to enforce learning, and much more. The gamification of Security…

The shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals is a growing concern in the information technology industry, and the rapid growth of the field exacerbates this shortage. Employers express concern over the shortage of hands-on, practical skills and problem-solving abilities among recent graduates, leading to the "cybersecurity skills…

The cybersecurity landscape in the United States has rapidly evolved, marked by risk and novel threats (Georgescu, 2021; Siraj et al., 2021). Today, security mindsets are "widely accepted in the computer security community as … essential … for successful cybersecurity practice" (Peterson, 2021, para. 1), valuable to aspiring…

Many organizations are providing employee training to raise security awareness as data breaches increase. Organizational digital transformation has accelerated, especially during the COVID-19 outbreak. It has made the technology industry a prime target for cyberattacks. Although more organizations invest in cybersecurity training, data breaches…

Educators of graduate cybersecurity education lack decision methodologies to aid in selecting and prioritizing cybersecurity criteria and tools to provide hands-on learning in cyber courses. Educators are challenged with keeping the cybersecurity tools in the education curriculum relevant and updated. The risk of not doing so, is possibly…

The need in the public sector is to help people 60+ years of age in the safe, practical use of technology for business, personal use, and family interaction, as this group is targeted more than others for technology fraud. The practice-focused question centers around which topics need to be part of technology fraud pilot training to reduce the…

This dissertation introduces a comprehensive framework aimed at reshaping applied cybersecurity education to significantly ease the learning curve, at scale, through three synergistic innovations. These methods address the daunting educational barriers in cybersecurity, enabling learners at all levels to understand complex security concepts more…

The emerging impact of gamification in the field of education has generated several possible avenues for enhancing learning outcomes and raised a large number of as-yet unanswered questions as to the effectiveness of different gamification techniques in different contexts. This quantitative survey study examines the impact of gamification on…

Modern higher education institutions must contend with a litany of cyber threats, regulations, and environmental dynamics. These institutions are increasingly being targeted due to the value of the data they possess and their historically permissive configurations that are intended to support academic freedom. Many universities are implementing…

Although there have been numerous technological advancements in the last several years, there continues to be a real threat as it pertains to social engineering, especially phishing, spear-phishing, and Business Email Compromise (BEC). While the technologies to protect corporate employees and network borders have gotten better, there are still…

Shortages within the cybersecurity workforce are not new; fluctuations in supply and demand, fiscal and monetary constraints, and technological advances have influenced changes within the cybersecurity workforce nationally and globally. Cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) impact many different cybersecurity roles within different…

Personalized learning is gaining popularity in online computer science education due to its characteristics of pacing the learning progress and adapting the instructional approach to each individual learner from a diverse background. Among various instructional methods in computer science education, hands-on labs have unique requirements of…

Using the lived experiences of study participants, the purpose of the exploratory qualitative study was to explore collegiate cybersecurity instructors' qualities needed to maximize the engagement of Generation Z cybersecurity learners to successfully become cybersecurity specialists. This understanding is important in order to increase the…

Information security has been a particularly hot topic since the enhanced internal control requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) were introduced in 2002. At about this same time, cloud computing started its explosive growth. Outsourcing of mission-critical functions has always been a gamble for managers, but the advantages of cloud computing are…