ACM/IEEE CSEC2017

Cybersecurity Curricula 2017

pedagogy
global
Published

May 8, 2026

At a glance

Steward Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education (ACM, IEEE-CS, AIS, IFIP)
Canonical page Cybersecurity Curricula 2017
Version 2017 v1.0
Released 2017-12-31
Source format PDF
License Copyright 2017 by ACM, IEEE, AIS, IFIP, all rights reserved, with permission granted only to use these curricular guidelines for the development of educational materials and programs
framework_summary slug csec2017-v1

Structure in cybed: terms

CSEC2017 structural mapping Frameworkcsec:FrameworkKnowledge area(curricular thought-model grouping)csec:KnowledgeArea= cybed:OrganizingUnit(no cybed:Role)Topiccsec:Topic= cybed:RoleElementcontainscybed:hasOrganizingUnithas elementcybed:hasElement
CSEC2017's Knowledge Areas are curricular thought-model groupings, not workforce roles. Click any box or edge label to flip between plain English and the technical schema name.

Counts

Table 1
Measure Value
Knowledge Areas 8
Strict elements (topics) 38
Subpoints (parsed enumeration lists) 2
With-examples elements 40
Topics per Knowledge Area, strict 4.8
Topics per Knowledge Area, with-examples 5.0

The Knowledge Area / Topic structure is the framework’s coarse-grained surface. Beneath each topic, CSEC2017 defines further sub-elements (Essentials and supplementary content) that the current ingestion captures only at the topic level. Element counts are therefore a lower bound on what CSEC2017 specifies.

Provenance

Source

CSEC2017 curricular guidelines (the Joint Task Force report from ACM, IEEE-CS, AIS SIGSEC, and IFIP WG 11.8).

Ingestion

scripts/010-ingest-csec2017.R parses the structure into the cybed schema.

License

Copyright 2017 by ACM, IEEE, AIS, IFIP, all rights reserved, with one purpose-scoped permission: permission is granted “to use these curricular guidelines for the development of educational materials and programs. Other use requires specific permission.” This site shows Knowledge Area names, counts and alignment scores, and no statement text. A permission request to ACM is being prepared. The package does not bundle the source text. Users stage it locally.

Caveats

  • CSEC2017’s KAs are curricular thought-model groupings, not workforce roles or competency clusters. Cross-framework comparisons that equate KAs with roles misrepresent the framework’s intent.
  • Per-topic Essentials and supplementary content are not materialized as RDF triples. The strict count reflects only the top-level topic enumeration per Knowledge Area, so headline element-density figures should be read as a floor rather than a ceiling.
  • CSEC2017 is a curricular guideline for university programs, not a hiring specification. The framework does not encode workforce roles or proficiency levels, so it sits on a different axis from NICE, DCWF, and ECSF in any cross-framework comparison.
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