As technology and digitalization rapidly advance, the demand for cybersecurity professionals continues to grow. The surge in cyber threats has further emphasized the necessity for skilled cybersecurity experts as organizations strive to secure their operations. This research paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of specific cybersecurity reports to identify employment-related concerns and prevailing practices within the cybersecurity sector. Specifically, the analysis seeks to un-cover obstacles hindering the recruitment of candidates from non-traditional disciplines, while also identifying effective strategies for attracting, retaining, and developing multidisciplinary cybersecurity talent.
Industry 5.0, with its focus on human-centered, ethical, and sustainable technology, highlights an increased need for strong cybersecurity to protect interconnected systems. As digital infrastructures evolve to prioritize collaboration between humans and machines, ensuring cybersecurity becomes essential to safeguard both users and the technologies they interact with. As these systems become more integrated, the complexity of cyber threats grows, highlighting the need for cybersecurity education that prepares graduates to tackle these challenges. However, undergraduate computing programs in South Africa often don't provide enough focus on security topics, leaving many graduates unprepared for industry needs. This paper employs an Educational Design Research methodology to propose a conceptual transdisciplinary decision-making model for integrating cybersecurity education throughout a three-year BSc computing degree program at South Africa's North-West University (NWU). While this research focuses on NWU's undergraduate computing curriculum, the model is adaptable and can guide other institutions seeking to embed cybersecurity more broadly. Using the guidance of frameworks like the ACM Computing Curricula 2020 (CC2020), Cybersecurity Curricular Guidelines 2017 (CSEC2017), and Computer Science Curricula 2023 (CS2023), the model introduces key cybersecurity topics, such as cryptography, network security, and secure software development, across various modules from mathematics to programming. This approach ensures students build cybersecurity skills over time which aligns with Industry 5.0's focus on ethical, human-centered technology. Practical activities like security labs, hackathons, and interdisciplinary projects give students hands-on experience, promoting critical thinking and teamwork across different fields. By making cybersecurity a core part of NWU's computing curriculum, the decision-making model aims to help address the cybersecurity skills gap in South Africa and produce graduates ready to contribute to a secure digital future.
Modern cybersecurity education must prepare learners to understand how security threats can be realized and to diagnose and respond to attacks, under real-world constraints-such as incomplete or ambiguous information. This paper introduces two educational approaches. First, we adapt attack trees, a threat-modeling technique, into an intuitive framework for teaching security reasoning to non-experts, including children. By breaking down attacks into visual, step-by-step scenarios, learners systematically identify risks and countermeasures, fostering critical thinking and collaboration. Second, we propose a method to quantify the diagnosability of attacks, measuring how much information is needed to identify an attacker's actions (which are unseen). This approach helps educators design realistic training exercises where learners prioritize evidence and act decisively under uncertainty. Finally, we discuss how this framework could be translated into a security tool accessible to a wide range of users.
The recently enacted European regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the AI Act, seeks to mitigate risks associated with AI systems and to protect fundamental rights while promoting innovation within the European Union (EU). For cybersecurity educators and professionals, Article 4 of the AI Act promotes the tremendous challenge of obliging organizations that use AI systems to educate their employees on the subject, in order to promote AI literacy. This article therefore provides a systematic literature review on the AI Act and its criticisms, with the intention of fostering an understanding of the challenges ahead, by providing an educational overview on the subject of AI regulation. We find research on the AI Act from a cybersecurity perspective to be scarce. The results of our review demonstrate that the Act has faced significant criticism for its lack of clarity and the challenges of concrete application, stemming from the complexity of algorithms and the diverse range of sectors it encompasses. The complexity of implementation of the regulation hinders compliance and, overall, innovation, leaving several opportunities for regulatory improvement and academic research.
This study explores the potential of gamification as an effective method to simulate social engineering attacks and enhance cybersecurity awareness among employees. Given the increasing sophistication of social engineering tactics, traditional security training needs to be improved, prompting a need for innovative approaches. The objective of this research is to develop guidelines for using gamification to simulate social engineering attacks, focusing on methods that increase employee engagement and improve their ability to recognize and respond to these threats. This study employed a systematic literature review to examine current gamification techniques and lay the groundwork for developing these guidelines. The search criteria initially identified 232 papers and after screening, only 12 papers were reviewed. Findings indicate that gamification techniques, such as simulations, challenges, and reward systems, hold substantial promise in enhancing cybersecurity awareness.
