Weekly submission, 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 11:55 pm on their due date.

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%, and

• Achieve at least 40% in the final examination

Late Assessment Submission and Penalties

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark of the task) will be applied for each day a written report or presentation assessment is not submitted, up until the 7^th day (including weekends). After the 7^th day, a grade of ‘0’ will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. The submission time for all uploaded assessments is 11:55 pm. A 1-hour grace period will be provided to students who experience a technical concern. For any late submission of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, please apply for Special Consideration. 

Assessments where Late Submissions will be accepted 

• Worshop Tasks (Weekly) – YES, Standard Late Penalty applies 

• Assignment 1, Group Project, and Final examination - NO, unless Special Consideration is Granted 

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.

Final Exam

Assessment Type : Examination

Indicative Time on Task : 10 hours

Due: S2 Exam Period

Weighting: 45%

The final examination in this unit is a hurdle requirement; students must get a mark of at least 40% in the examination to pass the unit. If students get a mark between 30% and 40% in students' first attempt at the final examination, students will be given a second and final attempt. Concretely, in order to pass the unit, students must obtain an overall total mark of 50% or higher, and a mark of 40% or higher in the final examination.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Analyse key security requirements and trends in a distributed networked computing settings
• Evaluate security services such as authentication and access control in distributed systems and networks
• Analyse the security threats and develop security architecture and functionalities to counteract the security threats
• Apply (network) security techniques and mechanisms to develop (network) security protocols
• Develop and advance skills of research and critical analysis in a manner consistent with the completion of a postgraduate degree

Workshop Tasks

Assessment Type: Participatory task

Indicative Time on Task 2 : 0 hours

Due: Weekly Weighting: 10%

Weekly tasks or quizzes to assess understanding of the course material. On successful completion you will be able to:

• Analyse key security requirements and trends in a distributed networked computing settings
• Evaluate security services such as authentication and access control in distributed systems and networks
• Analyse the security threats and develop security architecture and functionalities to counteract the security threats
• Apply (network) security techniques and mechanisms to develop (network) security protocols

Assignment 1

Assessment Type: Problem set

Indicative Time on Task: 15 hours

Due: Week 5 Weighting: 15%

Assignment on Security Mechanisms and Protocols On successful completion you will be able to:

• Analyse key security requirements and trends in a distributed networked computing settings
• Evaluate security services such as authentication and access control in distributed systems and networks
• Analyse the security threats and develop security architecture and functionalities to counteract the security threats
• Apply (network) security techniques and mechanisms to develop (network) security protocols

Assignment 2

Assessment Type: Group Project

Indicative Time on Task: 40 hours

Due: Week 12

Weighting: 30%

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Analyse key security requirements and trends in a distributed networked computing settings
• Evaluate security services such as authentication and access control in distributed systems and networks
• Analyse the security threats and develop security architecture and functionalities to counteract the security threats
• Apply (network) security techniques and mechanisms to develop (network) security protocols
• Develop and advance skills of research and critical analysis in a manner consistent with the completion of a postgraduate degree.
• Demonstrate effective written and verbal communication skills to communicate technical ideas

COMPUTING FACILITIES

Please note that this is a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) unit. You will be expected to bring your own laptop computer (Windows, Mac or Linux), install and configure the required software.

CLASSES AND TUTORIALS

Each week you should complete any assigned readings and review the lecture slides in order to prepare for the lecture. There are three hours of face-to-face lectures every week with a one hour tutorial. The lecture slides and tutorial material will be uploaded to COMP8260's iLearn page by 9:00am on Mondays. You are at the very least expected to go through the lecture slides and tutorial material for better engagement with your lecturers and tutor. Lectures and tutorials will be interactive, and you can ask questions, anytime during the lecture or/and tutorial, related to the lectures, hands on, and take home exercises.

For details of days, times and rooms consult the timetables webpage.

Tutorials and exercises will commence in week 1. Please note that you will be required to submit work every week

METHOD OF COMMUNICATION

This unit makes use of discussion boards hosted within iLearn. Please post questions there; they are monitored by the staff on the unit. Alternativetly, the staff can be reached out via their university email addresses given at iLearn page for this unit.

REQUIRED AND RECOMMENDED TEXTS AND/OR MATERIALS

This material for this unit is in part based on the following textbooks:

• William Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practices, Prentice Hall (4th Edition) · Charles Pfleeger, Security in Computing, Prentice Hall, 20026 (4th Edition)
• Charlie Kaufman, Radia Perlman and Mike Speciner, Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World, Prentice Hall • Dieter Gollman, Computer Security, John Wiley
• Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford, Practical Unix Security, O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
• Trusted Computing Platforms: TCPA Technology in Context, Ed: Siani Pearson, Prentice Hall, 2003
• Ross Anderson, Security Engineering, John Wiley, 1st or 2nd Edition

TECHNOLOGY USED AND REQUIRED

iLearn

iLearn is a Learning Management System that gives you access to lecture slides, lecture recordings, forums, assessment tasks, instructions for practicals, discussion forums and other resources.

Echo 360

Digital recordings of lectures are available. Read these instructions for details.

Technology Used

PacketTracer, Anaconda, Jupyter Notebook with Python.