FIT5044 – Network Security Week 1

The first lecture for network security was presented by Dr. Phu Le. Materials for the subject will be published to: http://users.monash.edu/~pdle/cpe5002/l.html

Some interesting points were raised during the lecture:

• 100% secure networks are currently an untenable goal. The US gov’t is grappling with this issue at present: http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/nsa-director-says-us-has-duty-secure-internet-090710
• Numerous countries have developed large teams within their defense forces for cyber defense and offence.
• At present banks and insurers are paying out millions of dollars every year to cover loses through cyber theft.
• 50% of security breeches go unreported
• There is generally a mutual trade-off between security and speed/convenience.

This subject will focus  on the software side of information security. As such, our assignments will revolve around cryptography, firewalls and security policies. Interestingly there is no exam for this subject.

Tutorials started this week also. I was a bit perplexed by the fact that our first tutorial was purely a linux tutorial. I think basic linux skills should be a pre-requisite for post graduate level IT studies! In any case I think I will find this subject very interesting as it is very deep and each of the topics we skim over are areas of research in themselves. For a practical exercise this week I will complete a tutorial on installing an SSL certificate in Apache. Something fairly common-place but none-the-less I have very little understanding of: http://www.digicert.com/ssl-certificate-installation-apache.htm