CyberBOT: Towards Reliable Cybersecurity Education via Ontology-Grounded Retrieval Augmented Generation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhao, Chengshuai, De Maria, Riccardo, Kumarage, Tharindu, Chaudhary, Kumar Satvik, Agrawal, Garima, Li, Yiwen, Park, Jongchan, Deng, Yuli, Chen, Ying-Chih, Liu, Huan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhao, Chengshuai
De Maria, Riccardo
Kumarage, Tharindu
Chaudhary, Kumar Satvik
Agrawal, Garima
Li, Yiwen
Park, Jongchan
Deng, Yuli
Chen, Ying-Chih
Liu, Huan
author_facet Zhao, Chengshuai
De Maria, Riccardo
Kumarage, Tharindu
Chaudhary, Kumar Satvik
Agrawal, Garima
Li, Yiwen
Park, Jongchan
Deng, Yuli
Chen, Ying-Chih
Liu, Huan
contents Advancements in large language models (LLMs) have enabled the development of intelligent educational tools that support inquiry-based learning across technical domains. In cybersecurity education, where accuracy and safety are paramount, systems must go beyond surface-level relevance to provide information that is both trustworthy and domain-appropriate. To address this challenge, we introduce CyberBOT, a question-answering chatbot that leverages a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline to incorporate contextual information from course-specific materials and validate responses using a domain-specific cybersecurity ontology. The ontology serves as a structured reasoning layer that constrains and verifies LLM-generated answers, reducing the risk of misleading or unsafe guidance. CyberBOT has been deployed in a large graduate-level course at Arizona State University (ASU), where more than one hundred students actively engage with the system through a dedicated web-based platform. Computational evaluations in lab environments highlight the potential capacity of CyberBOT, and a forthcoming field study will evaluate its pedagogical impact. By integrating structured domain reasoning with modern generative capabilities, CyberBOT illustrates a promising direction for developing reliable and curriculum-aligned AI applications in specialized educational contexts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_00389
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CyberBOT: Towards Reliable Cybersecurity Education via Ontology-Grounded Retrieval Augmented Generation
Zhao, Chengshuai
De Maria, Riccardo
Kumarage, Tharindu
Chaudhary, Kumar Satvik
Agrawal, Garima
Li, Yiwen
Park, Jongchan
Deng, Yuli
Chen, Ying-Chih
Liu, Huan
Artificial Intelligence
Advancements in large language models (LLMs) have enabled the development of intelligent educational tools that support inquiry-based learning across technical domains. In cybersecurity education, where accuracy and safety are paramount, systems must go beyond surface-level relevance to provide information that is both trustworthy and domain-appropriate. To address this challenge, we introduce CyberBOT, a question-answering chatbot that leverages a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline to incorporate contextual information from course-specific materials and validate responses using a domain-specific cybersecurity ontology. The ontology serves as a structured reasoning layer that constrains and verifies LLM-generated answers, reducing the risk of misleading or unsafe guidance. CyberBOT has been deployed in a large graduate-level course at Arizona State University (ASU), where more than one hundred students actively engage with the system through a dedicated web-based platform. Computational evaluations in lab environments highlight the potential capacity of CyberBOT, and a forthcoming field study will evaluate its pedagogical impact. By integrating structured domain reasoning with modern generative capabilities, CyberBOT illustrates a promising direction for developing reliable and curriculum-aligned AI applications in specialized educational contexts.
title CyberBOT: Towards Reliable Cybersecurity Education via Ontology-Grounded Retrieval Augmented Generation
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00389