Competency-based education (CBE) for IT security: towards bridging the gap

Skills gap is a common problem between university products and industry needs. This is apparent in many, if not all of the areas. The gap plays a role in the productivity or development of a given industry, as well as the unemployed rates. In a competitive world, employers are always looking for the best candidates for employment, with the best being defined as being competent both technically and professionally. We contend that competency-based curriculum can provide a means to narrow and even close the skills gap. In this paper, we present a Competency-Based Curriculum Model that can be used as a guide to develop a competency-based curriculum. This model will be employed to develop a competency-based curriculum for IT Security Engineers.