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 Assessment Submission

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

Requirements to Pass this Unit

To pass this unit you must:

1. Attempt all assessments, and

2. Achieve a total mark equal to or greater than 50%

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.

Supplementary Examinations

Applications for Supplementary Examinations under the Disruption to Studies Policy must be made via AskMQ. If this is approved, the Unit Convenor will attempt to schedule an examination at a time convenient to the student and will notify the student of the date and time of the examination in a timely fashion.

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. 

Assessment Tasks

Weekly Tasks

Assessment Type ¹: Quiz/Test Indicative Time on Task ²: 5 hours Due: Each week by 2355 Sunday Weighting: 20%

The final mark will be calculated from the best 10 non-zero of 12 scores achieved by the student; only quizzes actually attempted are considered non-zero. The quiz/test is worth 20%.

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 examination worth 15% that 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 examination worth 15% that 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: 7 hours Due: Week 13 Weighting: 15%

A 50 minutes long online examination worth 15% that 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: Part 1:2355 Sunday end of Week 6 Weighting 15%, Part 2:2355 Sunday end of Week 12 Weighting: 20%

In this assignment, the student will be set a written task based on the material covered in Module 1 and Module 2. The assignment is worth 35%.

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.

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

Week 1 classes

Lecgtures and SGTA commence in Week 01 and all students are expected to attend the lectures and SGTA.

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 tutorial workshop, as the workshops 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. If there is a suitably high physical attendance at weekly lectures, then Guest lecturers and interview subjects may 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; these activities vary between workshops, practical tasks and tutorials.

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.

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.

The online component of this unit will be taught face-to-face.