Database Security: Ensuring That the Database Course can Serve Cybersecurity Students as Well as Traditional Computer Science Students

Abstract

With the growth of cybersecurity programs and the computing industry's emphasis on security, traditional courses must continue to evolve. With database courses serving both traditional computer science programs, along with more recent cybersecurity programs, attention must be given specifically to these courses in this new context. This paper describes the current state of the traditional computer science database course specifically from the context of security and administration and recommends some modifications to content related to this growing trend. This qualitative study examined three areas in order to determine topics related to cybersecurity, but related directly to database concepts. First, a textbook review was conducted in order to identify potential database security themes and topics. This textbook review cast a wide umbrella in order to determine what textbook authors considered database security and what were considered traditional database concepts. Sometimes, the determination was not consistent. However, this study considered the following to be related to database security; database administration, including permission maintenance, database vulnerability identification and prevention, database view management, and database triggers. Second, recommendations from curricular guidelines were reviewed to consider the current state of such topics. These guidelines consisted of ACM's curriculum guidelines for post-secondary degree programs in cybersecurity and the ACM/IEEE's curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in computer science. Third, a review of literature was conducted in order to triangulate which identified topics are being taught and covered in several typical undergraduate settings. Finally, recommendations were made in order to ensure that database courses that service security programs cover material needed for that discipline. These recommendations included the incorporation of more systems administration tasks into the database curriculum. Specifically, tasks such as user setup, permission control and general database security within a multi-user environment is often overlooked in the general database curriculum in favor of more traditional database design concepts. With cybersecurity becoming ever-more important, these tasks should no longer be overlooked within the traditional database course.