; Office: GITC 4301Office hours (GITC 4301): M 1-2pm, W 4-5pm, and by appointment.
Class schedule: Thursday 6:00 - 9:05 pm, GITC 5601
Instructor: Reza Curtmola ; Email: ; Office: GITC 4301
Office hours (GITC 4301): M 1-2pm, W 4-5pm, and by appointment.
Overview
In today's society, the amount of data that is collected, stored, and distributed is massive and continues to grow at a rapid pace. New paradigms have emerged to handle such large volume of data. One example is the notion of remote data storage, which has materialized as a web service in Amazon's Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Oftentimes, data security is an important challenge that needs to be addressed in the design of such paradigms. This course will examine security aspects of data throughout its life cycle (collection, storage, and distribution).
The goals of the course are to familiarize students with the main security and privacy challenges associated with managing data, and to examine how to address these challenges.
A tentative list of topics includes:
Course format
The course will involve a substantial amount of reading, participation in class discussions, and a semester-long research project.
Each lecture will focus on a specific topic and will be based
on presentations and class discussions.
Each student is responsible for preparing at least one presentation (based on research papers)
and lead the discussion on the respective topic. The students are required to read the assigned papers for each week.
In addition, each student is responsible for submitting weekly a report for one of the papers assigned for that week,
which must include: (1) strenghts/weaknesses (2) two possible extensions.
This report has to be turned in at the beginning of class each week.
Students will work on the project in teams. There is flexibility on the nature of the project: Both theoretical and system contributions will be appreciated, although projects with theoretical contribution should have a clear practical significance. Potential topics for system-oriented projects include addressing security aspects of web services such as the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The outcome of the project will be in the form of a final report, describing the design/implementation efforts. Students will present their results in class.
Due to the dynamic nature of this field, there is no one book required for this course. Each selected topic will be based on handouts and research papers from top conferences and journals.
Who should take this course
Graduate students (PhD and MS) interested in having a deeper understanding of the ever-growing security and privacy concerns associated with the massive amount of data that is collected, stored and distributed in today's society.
The course is also an excellent starting point for finding research topics for Ph.D. and M.S. theses.
Prerequisites
CS 608/408 or CS 696 (or equivalent) is strongly advised. If in doubt about the prerequisites, please consult with the instructor for permission to take the class. Familiarity with basic security and cryptographic primitives, or storage and database systems will be required to understand the details of the assigned papers. The instructor will review in the first lecture the building blocks that will be used throughout the course.
Grading policy
| course project | 45% |
| paper presentations + reports participation in class discussion | 35% |
| final exam | 20% |
Academic integrity