Moduleoutline INFO409
Moduleoutline INFO409
General Information
Lecturer: F. Madzikanda
Learning Approach:
36 hours of class activities including - lecture, tutorial, lab, workshop seminar where applicable
Assessment:
Objectives:
This subject allows students to acquire the basic core knowledge of the field of Information Securityl, the
protection of information. The emphasis is on identifying vulnerabilities and threats on every components of the
computer system and how they can be protected. This includes topics such as cryptography, authentication,
firewalls, authorization, secure protocols and principles for developing secure software. This course aims
to:
1. Develop familiarity with and understanding of hot issues in computer and network security
3. Read and analyse scientific papers and present them in a seminar talk
Keyword Syllabus:
INTRODUCTION
Computer Security Concepts
Computer Security Defined
Computer Security Objectives
Need for Security
Key Computer Security Terminology
Operations Management
Computer operations
Data preparation
Boundary controls
Access controls – functions of an Access control mechanism, object resources, action privileges,
implementing an ACM, dynamics of authorization
Cryptographic controls – private key and public key cryptosystems, transposition ciphers, substituition
ciphers and product ciphers, choosing a cipher system, key management – key generation,key
distribution, key installation.
Digital signatures – secret messages, signed messages, signed, secret messages
Input Controls
Data and Instruction Input – data capture methods, data preparation methods, input devices, data codes,
data coding errors, types of codes, check digits, instruction input, data input validation checks, designing
data input validation program, handling of errors
Validation and Error Control – lexical validation, syntactic validation, semantic validation
Communication Controls
Component failure
Subversive threats – passive and active threats
Controls over component failure
Treatment of line errors
Error detection – loop checks, redundancy checks, parity checks
Error correction – error correcting codes, retransmission
Improving network reliability
Controls over subversive threats – link encryption, end to end encryption, message authentication codes,
message sequence numbers, request-response mechanism
Firewalls, intrusion detection systems, secure email,
Processing Controls
Processor controls – real memory controls, error detection and correction, access controls, operating
system integrity, nature of a secure operating system, functional requirements, design approaches,
operating system integrity threats.
Application software controls – validation checks
Output Controls - Inference controls
Security policies
Legal, Privacy and ethical issues in information security
Introduction to computer forensics
Text Books
Reference Books