Teaching Computer Security

Abstract

This paper describes three courses in computer security, and offers come comments about their appropriateness, their advantages and their disadvantages. 1. INTRODUCTION Interest in computer security has grown in the past few years [14], and nowhere is this more evident than in colleges and universities. Perhaps a rising awareness of potential threats encourages students to explore this area; perhaps the desire of businesses and industry in general to improve the security of their systems leads students to hope their studies will help them get jobs; or perhaps students enjoy the game of defeating security mechanisms and then improving them to keep others out. In any case, computer security has become a "hot" topic. While security is discussed in some classes (such as operating systems courses), it has so many facets that only a course devoted to computer security can examine the basic underlying principles in detail. For example, the notion of "auditing" involves both operating system ...