http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2216373/students-educated-security
By Tom Young
Computing
12 May 2008
IT students are not being educated on how to "bake in" security when
designing and developing new software applications, according to
research.
The study for the Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) found
that just one in five UK computing undergraduates get no more than five
hours education on software security - and many get none at all.
Insecure software applications have a knock-on effect on end users by
making their systems vulnerable, according to Bill Whyte, who carried
out the research.
"Today's computing market is a complex value chain of software
activities and is as vulnerable as its weakest link," he said.
Despite the current political clamour on the importance of information
security, this key issue is not being addressed, said Nigel Jones, head
of the KTN.
"The bottom line is that if we want to solve the problems we need to
start by fixing the root cause," he said.
A recent BERR and PricewaterhouseCoopers report on UK information
security breaches did not contain a single reference to secure software
development.
Received on Tue May 13 03:25:39 2008