ITM 416/604: Communications Networking & Security

Coursework

Professor Goel's Assignments

Assignments can be in-class or take-home and will be designated as individual or group assignments depending on the specific assignments.

Professor Duchessi's Assignments

In the first third of the course, Professor Duchessi will give one homework assignment. Details are listed in WebCT.

PROJECT

This project will involve doing a qualitative risk analysis project based on either a case or an organization that you are currently apart of. Students should work in teams of four and will use provided Excel spreadsheets in order to input the values in the analysis. When creating the values, students should also provide written justification for each value citing relevant sources and/or assumptions similar to those shown within the lecture. Download Risk Matrices: riskmatrices.xls

PAPER ON SECURITY-RELATED TOPIC

Students will be offered a set of topics and be required to specify their preference by ranking their top three topics in order. Students will be assigned topics based on these rankings. Other non-listed topics are welcome as long as they are pre-approved by the instructor. The paper should be 5-6 pages (SINGLE-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins on all sides). Sources should be scholarly, i.e. journal articles, conference proceedings, government documents, and at a smaller level newspaper/magazine articles(not Wikipedia or other websites if at all possible) and cited in APA style. The paper should have an abstract, introduction, literature review, discussion, and conclusion in some way, shape, or form.

The quality of references will be considered during the grading

DO NOT CUT AND PASTE. YOU WILL RECEIVE A ZERO FOR THE PAPER. In addition, use many different sources. You should not just summarize 1-2 sources as part of your paper. Use sources where they are able to best support your arguments. Use quotes sparingly when it is impossible to word something in a different way and in general avoid block quotes (quotes with more than 4 lines). At most have 1 block quote in the paper.

Writing a paper should be a sustained activity that should last several days. The first phase is to understand the subject that you are writing about. Secondly, you need to develop your own ideas for the paper. Thirdly, you need to pen your ideas in a cohesive and structured manner. If you are able to read the paper from one end to the other and it flows/makes sense like a story, you have done well. One good way of structuring a paper is to ask several questions to yourself.

  1. What is topic that I am writing about?
  2. Why is that topic interesting?
  3. What have other people written about the topic?
  4. What are the other issues that have not been addressed in the literature?
  5. How your own views on the topic?
  6. How can I justify those views?

Evaluating Materials Reference

APA Style Resources