General Faculty Policy on assessment submission deadlines and late submissions: 

Online quizzes, in-class activities, or scheduled tests and exam must be undertaken at the time indicated in the unit guide. Should these activities be missed due to illness or misadventure, students may apply for Special Consideration.

All other assessments must be submitted by 2355 on their due date.

Should these assessments be missed due to illness or misadventure, students should apply for Special Consideration.

Assessments not submitted by the due date will receive a mark of zero unless late submissions are specifically allowed as indicated in the unit guide or on iLearn.

Late submissions are NOT permitted.

Under no circumstances will submissions will be accepted after solutions have been posted.

Module Examinations

Module Examinations will be scheduled during the second hour of the weekly lecture in weeks 5, 9 and 13, and will replace that week's second hour of lectures; there is no SGTA scheduled for Weeks 05/09/13. Your attention is drawn to the university's 'Fit to Sit' policy, which states that by commencing an examination you are certifying yourself as fit to sit that examination. In particular, if you commence a Module Examination late, with insufficient time to finish it, you will not be offered a Supplementary Examination. It is the responsibility of students to make sure that they are aware of the time at which the Module Exam will commence.

Weekly Tasks

Assessment Type ¹: Quiz/Test Indicative Time on Task ²: 5 hours Due: Each week Weighting: 20%

Each week material will be followed by a short quiz to test student understanding. The final mark will be calculated from the best 10 of 12 scores achieved by the student.  Zero/non-attempted quiz marks are included in the average calculation.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Use international frameworks and Standards to develop cyber security policies, standards and procedures as part of an information security management system, including legal and regulatory compliance.
• Use qualitative and quantitative risk assessment techniques to both manage cyber security risk by selecting controls and to communicate risk management strategies to business stakeholders.
• Manage operational security by developing plans to support business continuity and cyber incident response, including digital forensics and evidence management.

Module Exam #1

Assessment Type ¹: Examination Indicative Time on Task ²: 7 hours Due: Week 5 Weighting: 15%

A 50 minutes long online written examination worth 20% that will be held in week 5 during the second hour of lectures. This will test your understanding of material covered in weeks 1 to 4.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Use international frameworks and Standards to develop cyber security policies, standards and procedures as part of an information security management system, including legal and regulatory compliance.

Module Exam #2

Assessment Type ¹: Examination Indicative Time on Task ²: 7 hours Due: Week 9 Weighting: 15%

A 50 minutes long online written examination worth 20% that will be held in week 9 during the second hour of lectures. This will test your understanding of material covered in weeks 5 to 8.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Use qualitative and quantitative risk assessment techniques to both manage cyber security risk by selecting controls and to communicate risk management strategies to business stakeholders.

Module Exam #3

Assessment Type ¹: Examination Indicative Time on Task ²: 6 hours Due: Week 13 Weighting: 15%

A 50 minutes long online written examination worth 20% that will be held in week 13 during the second hour of lectures. This will test your understanding of material covered in weeks 9 to 12.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Manage operational security by developing plans to support business continuity and cyber incident response, including digital forensics and evidence management.

Assignment

Assessment Type ¹: Project Indicative Time on Task ²: 24 hours Due: Week 11 Weighting: 35%

In this assignment, the student is required to complete a research project into current Cyber Security matters in the news, that reinforce the material in Modules 1 and 2.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Use international frameworks and Standards to develop cyber security policies, standards and procedures as part of an information security management system, including legal and regulatory compliance.
• Demonstrate the practical use of Information Security Risk Assessment in developing Management Policies and Procedures.

 If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

• the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment
• the Writing Centre for academic skills support.

² Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation.

Assessment Tasks

Requirements to Pass this Unit

To pass this unit you must:

• Attempt all assessments, and
• Achieve a total mark equal to or greater than 50%

Late Assessment Submission

Late assessments are not accepted in this unit unless a Special Consideration has been submitted and approved.

Special Consideration

The Special Consideration Policy aims to support students who have been impacted by short-term circumstances or events that are serious, unavoidable and significantly disruptive, and which may affect their performance in assessment. If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through ask.mq.edu.au.

Textbooks and Readings

Each lecture will require the student to read a provided text selected from a range of cyber security frameworks, Standards, textbooks, guides to best practice, blogs and other sources. Readings will be posted on iLearn and must be completed before the SGTA, as the SGTA are highly interactive.

A suggested (and highly recommended) textbook for cyber security studies generally is Smith, Richard E., Elementary Information Security, 3rd ed., Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2020.

Relevant international Standards have been purchased by the University Library and placed in Reserve for use by COMP3320/6325 students.

Lectures

The lecture content of this unit will be delivered on campus - please check the timetables page for details. Guest lecturers and interview subjects will provide 'real-world' case studies and examples. There will be approximately two hours of lecture content each week, which students can view at their own pace if they are unable to attend the on-campus lecture.

Small Group Teaching Activities (SGTA)

Students should participate in weekly SGTA on campus which start in Week 1; these activities vary between workshops, practical tasks and other activities.

You must read the weekly reading material and weekly tasks before attending the SGTA; attending the lecture would be extremely beneficial to your learning.

Cyber security management is, in large part, about communicating threats and risks to business executives and understanding how to achieve the enterprise's goals while dealing with those threats and risks. Students should therefore expect to develop and make use of their speaking skills during the sessions, and their writing skills during post-workshop discussions on iLearn.

Methods of Communication

We will communicate with you via your university email and through announcements on iLearn. Queries to convenors can either be placed on the iLearn discussion board or sent to the unit convenor via the contact email on iLearn.

COVID Information

For the latest information on the University’s response to COVID-19, please refer to the Coronavirus infection page on the Macquarie website: https://www.mq.edu.au/about/coronavirus-faqs. Remember to check this page regularly in case the information and requirements change during semester. If there are any changes to this unit in relation to COVID, these will be communicated via iLearn.

Week 1 Classes

During Week 1, regular lectures and SGTA will take place.  Details of the contents of Week 1 SGTA are available on iLearn.  However, this week we will discuss an introduction to the unit and what is expected of you to successfully complete the unit, and the Threat Landscape and the Defence Landscape.  

The unit comprises three major modules, each separately examinable.

Module 1: Governance and Compliance

• Introduction and Overview
• Business and security operations
• Governance, legal and regulatory, frameworks, standards and compliance
• Security architecture, authentication and access control models
• The Human Factor: Policies, culture and communication

Module 2 - Information Risk Management

• Introduction to Information Risk Management
• Threat Intelligence, Qualitative Risk Management
• Estimation, Calibration and Quantitative Risk Management
• Advanced Risk Management

Module 3 - Security Operations

• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning
• The Incident Response Cycle
• Incident Analysis, logs and SIEM, Security Orchestration and Response
• Digital Forensics and Evidence Management, Crisis Management and Crisis Communications

We value student feedback to be able to continually improve the way we offer our units. As such we encourage students to provide constructive feedback via student surveys, to the teaching staff directly, or via the FSE Student Experience & Feedback link in the iLearn page.

Student feedback from the previous offering of this unit was very positive overall, with students pleased with the clarity around assessment requirements and the level of support from teaching staff. As such, no change to the delivery of the unit is planned, however we will continue to strive to improve the level of support and the level of student engagement.