Even ten years ago the
majority of post-high school education was done in-person at brick & motor
universities across the country. If someone wanted to major in something as
specific as computer security and auditing, they would most likely need to be
co-located with that university to participate in the education it
provided.
The Internet changed
things.
One report by Babson
Survey Research Group indicates that 31.6% of all students now take at least
one distance learning (ie online) course as part of their
education. (Babson, n.d.) This same report indicates that between
2012 and 2016 the number of students studying on campus has dropped by over a
million students, or 6.4%. Because of this reliance on distance
learning, the reliance of physical books and publications used for resources
has also dropped. The use of online resources such as websites,
blogs, digitized books has not only expanded, but is now becoming acceptable
reference material for white papers, research reports and dissertations.
I can attest from
personal experience that old school professors did not accept online content as
acceptable resources and required all references to be physical books,
scholarly articles and empirical research.
(I got an F on a paper in 1995 where I referenced a discussion I had
with a fellow student in Australia regarding recreation activities in that
country when no other resources were available in my library).
My term paper for CYBR545
on Business Email Compromise had 16 references in the final paper, 14 of which
were from the current year (2019). Because
this was a newly-identified threat, no printed material was available on the
topic. But resources from the FBI, DHS
and other reputable information sources provided valuable, near-real time
details on this emerging threat.
It could be argued that the
curriculum for technology degrees (such as cybersecurity) is evolving faster
than books can be printed. Many of the books
we use are from before 2015, which was when I ventured into Cybersecurity as a
career, and much has changed since then.
Bellevue professors have been very accepting of online content as
acceptable references, and not enforcing printed books and scholarly articles. I would argue that technology websites,
blogs, vendor websites and technical forums provide credible information pertinent
to an advanced degree that should be considered an official resource. While books from PhDs and peer-reviewed scholarly
articles may have additional credibility based on the amount of research and
vetting that is done for them, the industry-standard is to acquire cyber
information from a multitude of online resources and is considered credible. Just as Zillow transformed real estate and
their Zestimate has become the
publicly-acceptable standard for property estimates, the use of online
resources has become the go-to place for credible information for cybersecurity
news, information and intelligence.
Websites which offer
some high-quality facts, intelligence, topics, technology and commentary
include:
-
Krebs on Security
-
Naked Security
-
Dark Reading
-
Hackaday Blog
-
The Hacker News
-
Threat Post
-
Security Week
-
CSO
-
IT Security Guru
-
Schneier on Security
-
Daniel Miessler
-
Google Online Security
-
Wombat Security
-
Errata Security
-
Kaspersky Labs
-
Security Bloggers Network
-
Sophos
-
Security Now podcast
-
Graham Cluley
-
The Security Ledger
-
Paul’s Security Weekly
-
AT&T Cybersecurity
-
Internet Storm Center
The truth is that books
and peer-reviewed publications are not able to keep up with the speed of
technology and the threats being brought upon our systems, networks and
software. I feel it is absolutely
justified to continue to use these web-based sources as long as they are deemed
credible by the cybersecurity community and are not biased based on foreign
input such Kaspersky or vendor-specific technologies (Vaughan-Nichols, 2017). Reliance on these sources may be the subject
of information warfare, so there may be the need for oversight if
disinformation begins to interject itself into the open news sources that
open-source intelligence aggregators acquire their products from.
Websites such as Purdue
University’s OWL provides guidance on how to reference websites and other
online content (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html) This indicates that online content is worthy of being referenced,
but those in academia are still skeptic about non-official publications and websites
which may not be as mainstream as other well-known sites. After going through the course on Information
Warfare, I believe it’s important to review the websites for credibility before
deciding to reference them in professional work or scholastic endeavors. Truth be told, many blogs are purely
subjective, even if the rationale is well-received. Being used as a source in higher level
education should be carefully done if the author intends to maintain
credibility in the discipline.
Technology is moving at
the speed of light, so the ability to find, use and reference credible online
resources is imperative to obtaining the most current information on topics
pertaining to cybersecurity and information technology.
References:
Higher Education Reports, (n.d.) Babson Survey Research Group. Retrieved on December 21, 2019 from https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/highered.html
Top 40 Cyber Security News Websites for Information Security Pros. (Dec. 16, 2019). Feedspot.
Retrieved on December 21, 2019 from https://blog.feedspot.com/cyber_security_news_websites
Vaughan-Nichols, S.,
(2017), Claims resurface that Kaspersky
helped Russian intelligence.
ZDNet. Retrieved on December 21,
2019 from https://www.zdnet.com/article/claims-kaspersky-works-with-russian-intelligence-resurface/
