Teaching
From a technical perspective, organizations need to know how hackers work so that they can build their security around it and take preemptive measures against future attacks. The goal of ethical hacking is to understand current exploits and assess weaknesses and vulnerabilities of various organizational information systems by attacking them within legal limits. This course is designed to provide students with an insight into current hacking tools and techniques used by hackers and security professionals to break into any computer systems. Throughout the course, students will engage in offensive and defensive hands-on exercises stressing ethical hacking and penetration testing that will be conducted in a vendor-neutral virtual environment. Topics include security threats and attack vectors, footprinting and reconnaissance, Google hacking, social engineering, insider threat, network scanning and enumeration techniques, vulnerability assessment, the Dark Web, and attack and defense strategies in emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing.
From cyber‐terrorism to identity theft, the digital age has brought about a change in how crime is being committed. The usage of computers and the Internet in crime has led to the emerging field of digital forensics. Most businesses employ digital forensic experts to identify cyber threats, protect against insider threats, reinforce data loss prevention, reduce the risk of identity theft, fraud, and other digital crimes, and aid in the collection of digital evidence for various investigations. This course is designed to provide students the necessary skills to perform an effective digital forensics investigation. It presents a methodological approach to digital forensics, including searching and seizing, chain-of-custody, acquisition, preservation, analysis, and reporting of digital evidence. It covers major forensic investigation scenarios that enable students to acquire necessary hands-on experience on various forensic investigation techniques and standard forensic tools required to successfully carry out a digital forensic investigation leading to the prosecution of perpetrators.
Computer networks have become more and more complex over the past decade and so have the threats to its security. The impact of security breaches on organizations varies from monetary loss, reputation damage, waning customer loyalty, diminishing investor confidence, to legal consequences. Network security plays a vital role in most of the organizations. A well-designed network can help detect unauthorized access and use of an organization’s networking infrastructure. It protects networks and their services from modification, destruction, or disclosure. It also increases operational efficiency. This course presents a defensive stand to network security. It provides the fundamental skills needed to analyze the internal and external security threats against a network, and to design and implement security mechanisms to protect an organization’s networking infrastructure. The emphasis is on understanding various fundamental computer networking and network security concepts, and design elements to secure networks from breaches. It also covers network defense mechanisms that are widely used such as the firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), honeypots, proxy servers, virtual private networks (VPNs), network segmentation, access control, identity and access management, virtualization and cloud computing, wireless network security, and network traffic monitoring and analysis.