Enhancing Interest in Cybersecurity Careers: A Peer Mentoring Perspective.

The focus of this paper is an evaluation of our peer mentoring framework designed to encourage more students to seek cybersecurity career pathways through providing peer interactions. We present and compare results from two years (Spring 2016 and 2017) of interaction between students in an introductory Information Systems class (IS 300: Management of Information Systems) and an upper-level elective Cybersecurity course (IS 471: Data Analytics for Cybersecurity). Our results show a continuation of the general trend observed in the 2016 study. The students who receive peer mentoring show more interest in cybersecurity issues and careers and gain more overall knowledge throughout the semester, than those who don't. This is reflected by the results of an anonymous survey and overall grade improvements. These students show more variations regarding their choice of cybersecurity as a career compared to students who did not receive any mentoring, demonstrating that they are able to make more informed decisions. Female students exhibit more pronounced responses to peer mentoring in contrast to their male counterparts.