CS421 – Computer & Internet Security
Bachelor of Science in Computing and Business Technologies
Core Course
CS421 – Computer & Internet Security
Course Unit Code: CS421
Type Of Unit: Core
Level of Course Unit: First cycle
Year of Study: Fourth year
Semester: A’ Semester
Number of ECTS Credits: 7.5
Class Contact Hours: 36
Face to Face
Face to Face
Prerequisites
Course Objectives
The objective of this course is to teach the students the fundamentals behind security engineering principles that underpin today’s cyber world. The course introduces the concepts and issues related to security of systems, data and infrastructures, human and computer interaction and presents the state-of-art techniques for mitigating cyber threats and ensuring compliance with regulations and policies. The course covers both technical, like cryptographic primitives and security designs, and managerial material that needed to be understood by a leader in an IT organization. Upon completion of this course, students will acquire the necessary understanding and critical thinking for assessing threats based on widely used risk- assessment methodologies and being in position to lead the implementation of an Information Security Management System (ISMS) in their enterprise or organization.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand fundamental security notions such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, threat, vulnerability and risk.
- Acquire skills regarding applications of information security risk assessment on a given scenario for mitigating a threat and the implementation of security policies.
- Develop communication skills regarding communicating the results of a technical risk assessment analysis to the executive business team (CEO, CIO, CFO, COO).
- Understand notions underpinning digital infrastructures from a security point of view; authentication, fingerprinting, backup, passwords, security policies.
- Understand technical cryptographic primitives and how they are combined to secure an IT infrastructure; hash functions, encryption algorithms, digital signatures, message authentication codes, PKI.
- Understanding the human-computer interaction and its implications to today’s security.
- Develop the appropriate knowledge and build sufficient skills to provide leadership in the the implementation of an Information Security Management System (ISMS) in an enterprise organization.
Course Content
Course Features
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
Lectures; in-class discussion and debates; in-class exercises; problem sets; team work; video case studies, team presentations, interactive online learning via Moodle (quizzes, assignments, forums)
Assessment methods and criteria
10% Class participation
30% Mid-Term Assignment
60% Final Exam
Language of Instruction
English
Readings
Textbooks:
1. Charles P. Pfleeger, Shari Lawrence Pfleeger and Jonathan Marguilies. Security in Computing. Prentice Hall (5 th Edition), 2015.
Optional textbook:
2. Bruce Schneier. Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms and Source Code in C. Wiley (2015 Special Edition), 2015.
3. Ross J. Anderson. Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems. Wiley (2nd Edition), 2008.
Articles & Journals:
4. Stefan Bauer, Edward Bernroider and Katharina Chudzikowski. Prevention is better than cure! Designing information security awareness programs to overcome users’ non-compliance with information security policies in banks. Computers & Security, Jul2017, Vol. 68, p145-159, 2017.
5. Yan Chen, K. Ramamurth and Kuang-Wei Wen. Organizations’ Information Security Policy Compliance. Stick or Carrot Approach. Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol 29(3), 2012.
6. Adel Yazdanmehr and Jingguo Wang. Employees’ Information Security Policy Compliance: A norm activation Perspective. Decision Support Systems Vol 92, 2016.
English (UK) 
Ελληνικά 
