CSCE 443/843: Cybersecurity for Big Data, Cloud and Cryptocurrencies
Fall 2023, MWF 1:30–2:20PM
Class number: 20611 (443) and 20612 (843)
Classroom: 209 OLDH and on Zoom
Instructor: Dr. Byrav Ramamurthy, Professor, School of Computing
Course Description: Cybersecurity is a huge concern in today's online world. With the emergence of Big Data, Cloud environments and online social media platforms, users are exposed to a wide variety of cybersecurity attacks. Emerging technologies and frameworks such as End-to-end encryption, Blockchains, Smart Contracts, OpenID Connect and OAuth2.0 offer promising solutions to ensure data confidentiality and privacy.
In this hands-on lab-based course, you will understand the threat landscape and the mitigation strategies through lectures, programming assignments, labs and projects. Labs will be conducted on Amazon Web Services (using the Amazon Academy program) as well as academic cloud (such as Chameleon) and compute environments (such as Holland Computing Center and CSE server).
Sample course topics include:
• A quick introduction to networking concepts
• A quick introduction to applied cryptography
• The threat landscape
• Overview of common attack exploits
• Mitigation strategies
• Security for data at rest and in transit
• Big Data and network traffic analysis
• Basics of Cloud Computing
• Public and Private Clouds
• Cloud security and compliance
• Identity and Access Management
• Security against Phishing and Email Attacks
• Privacy and Online Social Medi
• Cybersecurity with Blockchains and Smart Contracts
• Cybersecurity Policies and Incident Response
Track Listing: This course is expected to count for the Systems (CS) and Communication, Networking, and Signal Processing (CE) Track for the graduate program breadth requirements.
Prerequisites: Data Structures and Algorithms (CSCE 310) or equivalent or by permission of instructor. Knowledge of programming in C++/Java/Python in Unix environment will be required. Courses such as CSCE 462/862 (Communication Networks), CSCE 463/863 (Data and Network Security) and CSCE 477/877 Applied Cryptography would be useful but not required. If you have a basic background in computer programming as well as computer systems and networking, you can write to the instructor for permission.
Questions? Please write to Prof. Byrav Ramamurthy (ramamurthy@unl.edu) if you have any questions or need additional information including the course syllabus.