A Systematic Mapping Study on Teaching of Security Concepts in Programming Courses

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews how cybersecurity concepts are integrated into university programming courses, highlighting research contributions, guidelines, and future opportunities for effective security education.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive literature review, classification scheme, and guidelines for teaching cybersecurity in programming courses, identifying gaps and future research directions.

Findings

24 relevant publications identified

Wide range of research contributions observed

Future opportunities include advanced courses and security frameworks

Abstract

Context: To effectively defend against ever-evolving cybersecurity threats, software systems should be made as secure as possible. To achieve this, software developers should understand potential vulnerabilities and apply secure coding practices. To prepare these skilled professionals, it is important that cybersecurity concepts are included in programming courses taught at universities. Objective: To present a comprehensive and unbiased literature review on teaching of cybersecurity concepts in programming courses taught at universities. Method: We perform a Systematic Mapping Study. We present six research questions, define our selection criteria, and develop a classification scheme. Results and Conclusions: We select 24 publications. Our results show a wide range of research contributions. We also outline guidelines and identify opportunities for future studies. The guidelines include coverage of security knowledge categories and evaluation of contributions. We suggest that future studies should cover security issues, negative impacts, and countermeasures, as well as apply evaluation techniques that examine students' knowledge. The opportunities for future studies are related to advanced courses, security knowledge frameworks, and programming environments. Furthermore, there is a need of a holistic security framework that covers the security concepts identified in this study and is suitable for education.