Developing Your Cybersecurity Career: Resources for Students by Michael Erbschloe - HTML preview

NSA/DHS National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CD) Knowledge Units.(12)

Students pursuing degrees in these programs must also accumulate knowledge units. The framework of Knowledge Units (KUs) and Focus Areas (FAs) was chosen to make the requirements easier to update in the future and to allow differentiation amongst the schools by recognizing the specific areas in which they focus their research and/or educational offerings (e.g., Digital Forensics, Systems Security Engineering, Secure Software Development). New academic requirements are based on knowledge units composed of:

• A minimum list of required topics to be covered
• One or more outcomes or learning objectives
• Designation based on meeting a defined set of core and a minimum of five (5) optional Knowledge Units for 4 year (plus) institutions and zero (0) for 2 year institutions.
• Defined Cores

2 year programs (with technical or applied emphasis)

4 year + programs (with technical or applied emphasis)

• Additional Cyber Defense Focus Areas Composed of a collection of Core and Optional Knowledge Units