Courses
Core Courses at CMU in Pittsburgh
14-740: Fundamentals of Telecommunication Networks
Fall: 12 units. 14-740 is a graduate-level, first-course in computer and telecommunication networks. There is no prerequisite of an undergraduate equivalent, but basic computer, programming and probability theory background is required.
The primary objective of this course is for you to learn the fundamental principles underlying computer and telecommunication networks. Using a top-down approach, we will cover topics in the application, transport, network and link layers of the protocol stack. We will also go over advanced topics, including network management, traffic engineering and router internals. Besides learning about the nuts and bolts, you will gain an understanding in engineering tradeoffs made and design principles used in computer and telecommunication networks. Another objective is for you to apply some of this knowledge in the context of systems projects. We will follow an aggressive pace in this course.
14-741: Intro to Information Security
Fall: 12 units. The growing importance of information systems, and their use to support safety-critical applications, has made information security a central issue for modern systems. The course introduces the technical and policy foundations of information security. The main objective of the course is to enable students to reason about information systems from a security engineering perspective. Topics covered in the course include elementary cryptography; access control; common software vulnerabilities; common network vulnerabilities; digital rights management; policy and export control law; privacy; management and assurance; and special topics in information security. Prerequisites: The course assumes a basic working knowledge of computers, networks, C and UNIX programming, as well as an elementary mathematics background, but does not assume any prior exposure to topics in computer or communications security.
14-761: Applied Information Assurance
Spring: 12 units. This class focuses on practical applications of Information Security/Assurance policies and technologies in enterprise network environments. The course will include lecture and demonstrations, but is designed around a virtual lab environment that provides for robust and realistic hands-on experiences in dealing with a range of information assurance topic areas. Students will be provided numerous opportunities to apply information security practices and technologies to solve real world I.A. problems. This course requires students to have a Windows XP Professional computer and VMWare Workstation 4.5.
95-756: Information Security Risk Analysis
Spring: 6 units. This course assumes a basic grounding in statistics and elementary economics. This course approaches information security as a management problem, where the organization has to decide how much to spend on information security and trade off information security risks with other risks. Students will learn analytical tools for calculating the costs and benefits of investment security decisions, and how to calculate the return on investments in a hands-on setting. Additional topics include a brief introduction to commercially available tools for risk management, an introduction to vulnerability management, risk aversion and insurance. Learning objectives: Upon completion of this course students will understand:
• Basic understanding of information security risks and the need to manage them.
• Key economic concepts in uncertainty, decision making, insurance and risk management framework.
• How to calculate ROI on a security investment.
95-757: Information Security Risk Policy and Management
Spring: 6 units. The goal of this course is to provide an overview of the security marketplace, an understanding of decision making when multiple parties are involved and the role of policy making in the context of information security. Policy is treated broadly and need not be necessarily government laws and regulations. Policy can be intra-organization. For example, it is an organization policy to disconnect an unpatched computer from its network. We will discuss the role of market and competition on security provision and then some of the key causes of market failure, namely externalities. We will then analyze how various policy tools can be applied to mitigate market failure. We will also discuss some key laws and regulation on product liability and security standards. The course also aims to provide an overview of security industry (that is key trends, technologies and various strategies by vendors and users) as well. By the end of the course, the students are expected to know key managerial and policy issues surrounding information security provision and when and how policy intervention is needed.
95-760: Decision Making Under Uncertainty
Fall: 6 units. During the past years, business people discovered that one of the most effective ways to evaluate decision alternatives involves using electronic spreadsheets to build a computer model of a given decision problem. A computer model is a set of mathematical relationships and logical assumptions implemented in a computer as a representation of some real-world decision problem. As a potential business decision maker, you will learn how to analyze decision alternatives before having to choose a specific plan for implementation. This course introduces you a set of techniques from the field of management science that can be applied to assist in decision making process. It is an advanced course which requires sufficient statistics background. Prerequisites: 95-796 Statistics for IT Managers.
95-796: Statistics for IT Managers
Fall: 6 units. This introductory course in data analysis and statistical inference requires no background in statistics. Its objective is to provide individuals who aspire to enter management positions in firms that use the Internet to market and serve its clients with the basic statistical tools for analyzing and interpreting internet data. The course is divided into three distinct components: descriptive statistics, fundamentals of statistical inference, and regression analysis. The emphasis of the classes on descriptive statistics is the calculation and interpretation of summary statistical measures for describing raw data. The sessions on fundamentals of statistical inferences are designed to provide you with the background for executing and interpreting hypothesis tests and confidence intervals. The latter half of the course focuses on regression analysis, a widely used statistical methodology. Throughout the course you will regularly analyze internet data using the statistical software package Minitab. Prerequisites: none.
Transferrable Courses at University of Hyogo
[Hyogo] Telecommunications Management
Fall: 12 transferrable units. This course will help students understand the technical, business and industry fundamentals necessary for the effective management of organizations that develop, operate and/or use telecommunications. These issues will be explored in the context of the decisions they influence in areas of strategic telecommunications planning, developing and deploying business applications, procuring and delivering services, and managing technical personnel and processes. Topics will include the underlying technical fundamentals of voice and data networks, the protocols and services built from those fundamentals, industry and regulatory structures and practices, and practical questions that arise from these issues.
The goals are for students to understand the telecommunications technology and industry well enough to make intelligent short-term and long-term business and technical decisions and to manage technical people wisely and effectively.
[Hyogo] Basics of Modern Cryptography
Fall: 12 transferrable units. Modern cryptography is based on computational complexity theory. Further, the algorithms used in modern cryptographic techniques must be proved mathematically to be secure. This is essentially why modern cryptographic methods are superior. Modern cryptography applications cover a wide range of areas in addition to the traditional cipher to hide secret messages. Application areas include digital signatures, authentication, digital payments, and digital voting, among others. In this course, you learn the basic framework to investigate and design digital security based on complexity theory via tailored course materials. Advanced knowledge of mathematics is not a prerequisite. The course begins by introducing Shannon’s perfectly secret cipher in order to highlight the difference between the earlier information theoretic framework of cryptography and the modern framework based on complexity theory. After covering several pioneering algorithms of modern cryptography such as RSA we will focus on the heart of modern cryptography and cover some of the most important and fundamental methodologies including zero-knowledge proof, random oracle methodology and authentication theory. The course materials are designed so as to encourage intuitive understanding of issues rather than a mathematically rigorous approach, but assumes an elementary understanding of probability theory.
[Hyogo] Economic Analysis
Fall: 6 transferrable units.