Handbook

The ZEIT 8021 Information Assurance and Security course is one of the core courses for the Masters in Cybersecurity. It is a standard postgraduate course, available only through distance delivery mode, worth six Units of Credit (6 UOC) and requires approximately 160 hrs of student study time. No prerequisites are required. This course aims to lay a firm foundation for cybersecurity knowledge, providing the ability for students from many related fields to gain perspective of modern cybersecurity threats and corresponding defensive controls and explore effective computer security and risk management strategies with particular emphasis on Information Assurance (IA) practices and techniques.

Within the course, IA practices and techniques refer to the steps involved in protecting information systems as part of the enterprise. Three common terms are associated with the definition of information assurance: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While IA is a field in and of itself, it can be thought of as logically occupying a position between Information Technology (IT), Software and Systems Engineering, and Security. Information Assurance can be thought of as ensuring that systems maintain these three qualities of the system.

IA involves keeping information confidential. This means that only those authorised to view information can access it. For example, information is classified or categorised within the military so that only people with certain clearance levels are allowed access to confidential information. Civilian organisations also categorise data, respecting the impact of loss or misuse.

Integrity involves ensuring that data and information systems may be changed by authorised people for authorised purposes. IA may be used to take steps to maintain integrity, such as having anti-malware software in place so that data will not be altered or destroyed and having policies in place so that users know how to properly utilise their systems to minimise the effect of (internal) user error, or (external) malicious code.

In the context of IA, availability is the ability of a system to be available for use by those who are allowed to access it. Protecting the availability can involve protecting against malicious code, hackers and any other threat that could block access to the information system or an explicit denial of service attack.

This master level 6.0 unit course is designed with the tools to integrate and apply IA knowledge to the system phases of System Development, System Acquisition, System Operation and Service Delivery. Along the way, we will review the process of considering Information Assurance from requirements elicitation through system delivery and operation to system disposal.

This course is theoretical and covers not only the very broad content of the ISC2 CISSP® certification but also draws on the CMMI for Development and for Services frameworks to provide a holistic application of Information Assurance considerations. It draws on ISC2 material as well as other scholarly sources.