Study-Unit Description

Study-Unit Description

CODE CSA2203

 
TITLE Foundations of Security Engineering

 
UM LEVEL 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course

 
MQF LEVEL 5

 
ECTS CREDITS 6

 
DEPARTMENT Computer Science

 
DESCRIPTION This study-unit is aimed at introducing the theoretic aspects of security engineering; both from the point of view of information security as well as that of secure systems and development. Students will learn to reason about security objectives and identify those threats originating from malicious behaviour aiming to subvert these objectives. With the knowledge acquired from this study-unit, combined with proper programming skills, students will be able to analyze and design the security aspects of computer systems, design and implement secure stream, block, and number theory-based ciphers, design and implement secure protocols, design secure networks understand the nature of security vulnerabilities within software systems, as well as proving the existence of these vulnerabilities via penetration testing techniques.

Textbooks:

• Stamp, M., "Information Security: Principles and Practice", Wiley-Interscience, 2005.

Reference Books:

• Anderson, R., “Security Engineering”, Wiley, 2001.
• Bishop, M., “Computer Security: Art and Science”, Addison-Wesley, 2003.
• Howard, M., and Lipner, S., “The Security Development Lifecycle: SDL: A Process for Developing Demonstrably More Secure Software”. Microsoft Press, April 2006.
• Menezes A.J., Van Oorschot P.C. and Vanstone S.A, “Handbook of Applied Cryptography”, CRC Press, 1997.
• Sipser, M., “Introduction to the Theory of Computation”, PWS Publishing, 1997.

 
RULES/CONDITIONS Before TAKING THIS UNIT YOU MUST TAKE CSA1017 AND TAKE CSA1022 AND TAKE CSA1023

 
STUDY-UNIT TYPE Lecture

 
METHOD OF ASSESSMENT
Assessment Component/s Sept. Asst Session Weighting
Assignment No 20%
Examination (3 Hours) Yes 80%

 
LECTURER/S Mark J. Vella

 

 
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
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Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice.
It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years.

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