Writing secure code is critical because a large fraction of security incidents result from flaws in the code. In order to effectively teaching knowledge of secure software engineering we have developed a course module titled “Introduction to Writing Secure Code”. This paper presents the content of this module and reports our teaching experiences. This module has been successfully taught in GEEN 163 Introduction to Java Programming class and GEEN 165 Computer Programming Design class in Spring 2011 in the Department of Computer Science at xxx University. Our experience exhibits that teaching this module in freshman and sophomore levels help students not only understand the impacts of insecure code, but also gain significant knowledge of safe programming practice. Students’ survey and feedback reflected that this module is very valuable in their educational experience. This module could be taught in first year freshman and second year sophomore classes of software engineering, computer science and information technology.

Author: Dr. Huiming Yu

Professor and director of graduate study, Computer Science Department, North Carolina A&T State University

Huiming Yu

Dr.Yu has 22 years of combined teaching and research experience in software engineering, visualization, web security, web applications and cloud computing. She received her Ph.D. degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1992. Dr.Yu has received more than $6 million dollars funding. She has published more than seventy journal and conference papers.