Developing Cyber Security Competences Through Simulation-Based Learning

Background

This chapter begins with outline of the importance of cyber security issues, cyber security education and experience-based learning approach. The author’s primary goal is to develop a methodological business-oriented and evidence-based learning environment which will provide students the opportunity to experience different professional skills, incl. cyber security competences. The overall intention is to offer a coherent framework that is student-oriented and makes use of active-based learning to encourage student active participation. A survey among students was conducted to support the identification of critical cyber security competences to be used in the background layer of the Reference Framework for Applied Competences (REFRAC).

Worldwide spending on on information security products and services is estimated to reach over $124 billion in 2019 (RSAC, 2019). Cyber security budgets have been on the rise for the past several years, increasing by 141% from 2010 to 2018. These numbers show the raising concern to the new challenges to legitimate businesses caused by the increasing activities of the cyber criminals. Cyber security is becoming a key business enabler and a vital tool to protect competitive advantage of companies (Buffomante, 2020:1). According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the rising cyber interdependence of infrastructure networks is one of the world’s top risk drivers. The WEF 2017 Global Risks Report found that cyberattacks, software glitches, and other factors could spark systemic failures that “cascade across networks and affect society in unanticipated ways” (WEF, 2017:7).