Advanced Network and System Security Teaching

In an attempt to address the growing shortage of cybersecurity specialists in the country, the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, started the course entitled Advanced Network and System Security (ANS) in the 2019/2020 school year. The ANS course covers the topics of computer system and network security, intrusion detection and prevention, and ethical hacking methodologies. This paper presents the course organization and associated laboratory environment and exercises and aims to prove that providing such a multidisciplinary laboratory leads to successful learning outcomes and directly improves gained knowledge in cybersecurity. The ANS course differs from all other related courses by covering various cybersecurity topics ranging from hardware through to network to web security. The analysis showed that 13 out of 19 Cyber Security Body of Knowledge classification Knowledge Areas are covered in the ANS course, unlike other related courses which cover up to 8 Knowledge Areas. Ultimately, the students’ practical skills improvement evaluation was performed through quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to prove that improving practical skills in the ANS laboratory resulted in the overall improvement of the gained knowledge.