Program Development in Cybersecurity with Focus on Business and Healthcare Concepts

This project is a collaboration between River Valley Community College and the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P), a consortium managed by Dartmouth College. The goals of the project are: * to transfer the expertise of the I3P consortium by integrating content in information assurance (IA) and business skills into existing community college information technology (IT) curricula; * to increase the capacity of New Hampshire's community colleges to provide education in IA through faculty professional development; and * to develop a certificate in IA and an Associate of Science degree in IA, both of which give students the knowledge and skills needed to ensure the security of the IT systems used by local healthcare providers.

As the foundation for the IA curriculum, the investigators are adapting courses from the Cyber Security Education Consortium (CSEC), an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) center of excellence in cybersecurity education, as well as from other ATE centers. With the advice of experts from Dartmouth and other I3P member institutions, health care providers, and businesses, the investigators are embedding into the curriculum essential business concepts, so that students can effectively communicate with business leaders and protect business processes, and case studies based upon real-world scenarios and problems derived from the experience of healthcare providers with issues of cybersecurity. The certificate and the AS degree in IA (with healthcare concentration) are initially being piloted at River Valley Community College and White Mountains Community College, with an eye toward adoption by other colleges in the Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH).

Concurrent with the curriculum development, the project team is providing training to CCSNH faculty in foundational IA courses, so that system colleges can collaboratively offer training in IA to IT professionals in business and industry through each college's business and industry outreach programs.