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Information Systems Security as a specialized area of study has mostly been taught at the graduate level. This paper highlights the efforts of establishing an Information Systems (IS) Security track at the undergraduate level. As there were many unanswered questions and concerns regarding the Security curriculum, focus areas, the benefit of certifications, and limited experience of undergraduate students, we reviewed prior literature and conducted in depth semi-structured interviews of industry executives that are responsible for the security portfolio within their organizations. We present findings that can benefit not only our efforts but also other schools that plan to offer similar programs at an undergraduate level.

Teaching office applications such as word processing, spreadsheet and presentation skills has been widely debated regarding its necessity, extent and delivery method. Training and Assessment applications such as MyITLab, SAM, etc. are popular tools for training students and are particularly useful in measuring Assurance of Learning (AOL) objectives. Meeting these assessment objectives has become a crucial issue in business schools as it now plays a major role in AACSB accreditation. It is our contention that these tools are fundamentally necessary to train and assess students to meet specific objectives that support a particular goal. In our experience, the simulation component of these tools is not enough to ensure all objectives. In this paper, we describe our experience with the use of in-the-application assignment projects to supplement the assessment and training simulation in order to improve final assessments and close the AOL loop.