Incorporation of Aspects of Systems Security and Software Security in Senior Capstone Projects

In this paper, we present our efforts at incorporating aspects of systems security and software security into the two-course senior capstone project sequence (Software Engineering and Senior Project courses) in the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum at Jackson State University. In this regard, we discuss: (i) the development of course modules and lab projects on security that were respectively taught and assigned to the students in the two capstone project course sequence, and (ii) the incorporation of aspects of systems and software security in the capstone projects that were conducted by our students during the academic year 2010-11. To further assist students on their capstone projects, we developed and offered two new elective courses on Systems and Software Security and Advanced Information Security in conjunction with the two capstone project courses during the Fall and Spring semesters as well as incorporated a network security module, lab projects and reading assignment to a regular Computer Networks course. We disseminate all of our course modules, lecture materials and lab project descriptions through an actively maintained website. Our approach could be adopted as a model for incorporating security in the software systems design and development courses in a computer science or software engineering curriculum.