Secure Systems Administration

Catalog description

This course is primarily a Laboratory based course. The intention of the course is to give the students an experience of administering an IT system for a hypothetical business with the IT system experiencing increasingly aggressively sophisticated cyber-attacks. They are expected to build abusiness plan for the hypothetical business, a policy-based IT protection plan that they then implement on the host machines and networks in the laboratory. Simultaneously the adversary builds an exploitation plan that attempts to defeat the business's IT protection implementation and is able to achieve his/her exploitation objectives. The adversary has access to any/all exploit technology available, but there is a moderating factor of cost associated with the exploitation technology. The defenders have access to protection technology, but again there is a mitigating cost factor associated with the protection technology. The objective of the class is to experience and learn the capabilities an effectiveness of both defensive andexploitative technology with an appreciation of the need for policy and planning that directs, supports, and constrains the actions of both sets of actors. This course is not offered via Distance Education. (Same as CSE 564.)