CS4203: Computer Security

This module is offered in 2024-25.

Aims

The aims of this module are:

To give a broad understanding of the field of Computer Security, including current commercial and financial security issues and areas of concern.
To discuss and analyse current events in the security domain.

On successful completion of this module, the student should:

Have acquired knowledge of a representative sample of security threats, issues, technologies and theories.
Be aware of threats through social media and how this impinges on computer and human security.
Be aware of the variety of problems affecting system and people centred security.
Know who the current leaders are in the field of Computer Security, the current trends and latest issues.
Be aware of security standards and industrial concerns.
Be aware of and able to use useable software to defend a system, databases of threats and monitors.
Understand cryptographic and network protocols and be able to use some in experimental work.
Understand certification protocols and the issues of protection gained or assumed by using protocols.
Have acquired skills giving a framework for analysing the security of a system or design.
Have acquired knowledge of a representative sample of security technologies.
Be aware of legal and social contexts where they impinge on computer security.
Be aware of software to aid defence of a system
Be aware of threats and where to get information on those threats
Understand the complexity of systems and the need for tiered defence
Be able to defend a system.
Understand certification, protocols, cryptography basics, access control and authentication.

Authorisation and authentication, vulnerabilities and threats; Internet security; firewalls, intrusion detection, malicious code and countermeasures; information hiding; stream and block ciphers; symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic protocols; digital signatures, public key infrastructures, certification authorities; security engineering, risk models, robustness, legal and organisational aspects of computer security; legal and international aspects; biometrics and current issues in the press.

This module has no compulsory elements beyond those common to all modules (mark of 4 in each assessment component).