The Soft Skills of Software Learning Development: the Psychological Dimensions of Computing and Security Behaviours

TL;DR

This research investigates how psychological soft skills influence security behaviors in software development and explores methods to teach these skills to computer science students to improve secure coding practices.

Contribution

It identifies key soft skills affecting security behaviors and proposes strategies for integrating soft skills training into computer science education.

Findings

Preliminary data suggests soft skills impact security practices.

Identified soft skills relevant to secure software development.

Proposed frameworks for teaching soft skills in computer science.

Abstract

When writing software code, developers typically prioritise functionality over security, either consciously or unconsciously through biases and heuristics. This is often attributed to tangible pressures such as client requirements, but little is understood about the psychological dimensions affecting security behaviours. There is an increasing demand for understanding how psychological skills affect secure software development and to understand how these skills themselves are developed during the learning process. This doctoral research explores this research space, with aims to identify important workplace-based skills for software developers; to identify and empirically investigate the soft skills behind these workplace skills in order to understand how soft skills can influence security behaviours; and, to identify ways to introduce and teach soft skills to computer science students to prepare the future generation of software developers. The motivations behind this research are presented alongside the work plan. Three distinct phases are introduced, along with planned analyses. Phase one is currently in the data collection stage, with the second phase in planning. Prior relevant work is highlighted, and the paper concludes with a presentation of preliminary results and the planned next steps.