Students

COMP8300 – Security Management

2023 – Session 2, In person-scheduled-weekday, North Ryde

General Information

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Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit Convenor, Lecturer, Tutor
Milton Baar
milton.baar@mq.edu.au
Contact via 04 1927 9847
Credit points Credit points
10
Prerequisites Prerequisites
ITEC602 or COMP6770
Corequisites Corequisites
Co-badged status Co-badged status
Unit description Unit description

The intent of this unit is to provide students with a working knowledge of commercial information security governance requirements, tools and techniques. The unit has a practical focus with tutorial and laboratory work that will include aspects of physical security and hacking, information security architectures and the creation of a dummy company on which the tools and techniques will be developed and tested. Topics include an introduction to information security, standard and governance, risk management concepts, security threats, controls, practical hacking, server hardening, evidence collection, business community planning and DRP, creating an enterprise information security framework, and EISF/ISMS certification.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • ULO1: Describe and explain the differences between security frameworks and standards
  • ULO2: Describe and demonstrate how to manage commercial risk, and unmitigated and mitigated risk
  • ULO3: Identify and assess commercial threats and types of threats and statutory requirements in a commercial environment
  • ULO4: Identify and analyse basic risk management errors and information exposures; assess various techniques and their suitability as controls

General Assessment Information

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
  • Participate in the Industry Presentation at the end of Week 13

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.

Written Assessments: If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the written assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through ask.mq.edu.au.

Weekly practice-based tasks: To pass the unit you need to demonstrate ongoing development of skills and application of knowledge in all the weekly practical classes. If you miss a weekly practical lass due to a serious, unavoidable and significant disruption, contact your convenor ASAP and the other members of your practical group. 

Note that a Special Consideration should only be applied for if you miss more than two of the weekly practical classes.

 

 

Assessment Tasks

Name Weighting Hurdle Due
Quiz 1 10% No Immediately after the end of the Week 05 lecture
Mid-semester workbook assessment 40% No 1700 Sunday Week 07
Quiz 2 10% No Immediately after the end of the Week 09 lecture
Industry Presentation 40% Yes Saturday 4-NOV-2023 0830-1300 on-campus in lecture room

Quiz 1

Assessment Type 1: Quiz/Test
Indicative Time on Task 2: 10 hours
Due: Immediately after the end of the Week 05 lecture
Weighting: 10%

 

A multiple choice quiz covering material from weeks 1-4

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Describe and explain the differences between security frameworks and standards
  • Describe and demonstrate how to manage commercial risk, and unmitigated and mitigated risk
  • Identify and assess commercial threats and types of threats and statutory requirements in a commercial environment
  • Identify and analyse basic risk management errors and information exposures; assess various techniques and their suitability as controls

Mid-semester workbook assessment

Assessment Type 1: Practice-based task
Indicative Time on Task 2: 40 hours
Due: 1700 Sunday Week 07
Weighting: 40%

 

Review and assessment of the workbook content that contains results from group tasks undertaken from weeks 1-7.

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Describe and explain the differences between security frameworks and standards
  • Describe and demonstrate how to manage commercial risk, and unmitigated and mitigated risk
  • Identify and assess commercial threats and types of threats and statutory requirements in a commercial environment
  • Identify and analyse basic risk management errors and information exposures; assess various techniques and their suitability as controls

Quiz 2

Assessment Type 1: Quiz/Test
Indicative Time on Task 2: 10 hours
Due: Immediately after the end of the Week 09 lecture
Weighting: 10%

 

A short-answer quiz covering material from weeks 4-8

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Describe and demonstrate how to manage commercial risk, and unmitigated and mitigated risk
  • Identify and assess commercial threats and types of threats and statutory requirements in a commercial environment
  • Identify and analyse basic risk management errors and information exposures; assess various techniques and their suitability as controls

Industry Presentation

Assessment Type 1: Viva/oral examination
Indicative Time on Task 2: 40 hours
Due: Saturday 4-NOV-2023 0830-1300 on-campus in lecture room
Weighting: 40%
This is a hurdle assessment task (see assessment policy for more information on hurdle assessment tasks)

 

Presentation of completed tasks to an external panel of Industry Experts

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Describe and explain the differences between security frameworks and standards
  • Describe and demonstrate how to manage commercial risk, and unmitigated and mitigated risk
  • Identify and assess commercial threats and types of threats and statutory requirements in a commercial environment
  • Identify and analyse basic risk management errors and information exposures; assess various techniques and their suitability as controls

1 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

Delivery and Resources

This unit is delivered face-to-face, although the lectures are recorded and available on iLearn.

The practical task starts in Week 2 and builds, week upon week, to a single deliverable assessed on the Saturday of Week 13 by a panel of Industry Experts.  The work undertaken on the practical task and its deliverable is usually undertaken by students, working in groups, off-campus at a time and location that suits them.

Each week, based on the lecture and workshop materials provided, you will gradually build an Information Security Management System (ISMS) that used the ISO/IEC:27001 standards as the framework.  In Week 07, the documentation you have created will be reviewed by the Unit Convenor and, if significant changes are required, you will work with the Unit Convenor to modify what you are doing and how you are doing it.

This unit is very heavily front-loaded, that means that the first seven weeks require significant group work to ensure that you are able to produce the documents required for the Week 13 presentation.

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.

Unit Schedule

Unit Structure

The unit is divided into three modules, Governance (Weeks 01-04), Risk (Weeks 05-08) and Operations (Weeks 09-12).

  • Quiz 1 in Week 5 covers Module 1
  • Quiz 2 in Week 9 covers Module 2
  • There is no Quiz for Module 3 as all modules will be covered as part of your Industry Presentation.
  1. Introduction
  2. Standards & Governance
  3. ISMS
  4. Information Classification
  5. Risk Management
  6. Qualitative Risk
  7. Quantitative Risk
  8. Loss Calculations
  9. Threats and Controls
  10. BCP/DRP
  11. Incident Management
  12. Forensics
  13. Industry Panel preparation

Policies and Procedures

Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au). Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:

Students seeking more policy resources can visit Student Policies (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/policies). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.

To find other policies relating to Teaching and Learning, visit Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au) and use the search tool.

Student Code of Conduct

Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/admin/other-resources/student-conduct

Results

Results published on platform other than eStudent, (eg. iLearn, Coursera etc.) or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au or if you are a Global MBA student contact globalmba.support@mq.edu.au

Academic Integrity

At Macquarie, we believe academic integrity – honesty, respect, trust, responsibility, fairness and courage – is at the core of learning, teaching and research. We recognise that meeting the expectations required to complete your assessments can be challenging. So, we offer you a range of resources and services to help you reach your potential, including free online writing and maths support, academic skills development and wellbeing consultations.

Student Support

Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/

The Writing Centre

The Writing Centre provides resources to develop your English language proficiency, academic writing, and communication skills.

The Library provides online and face to face support to help you find and use relevant information resources. 

Student Services and Support

Macquarie University offers a range of Student Support Services including:

Student Enquiries

Got a question? Ask us via AskMQ, or contact Service Connect.

IT Help

For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/. 

When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.

Changes from Previous Offering

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.

However, to improve the learning and assessment processes, alterations to the weeks in which content is deliverd was made to more closely align to a modularised structure.

Unit information based on version 2023.01R of the Handbook