C-Bay Instructor's Manual - Course Overview
Supported by NSF funding, members of DeAnza and Foothills Colleges’ faculty and staff collaborated with Carnegie Mellon faculty to design an experiential network security course aligned with industry needs. The goal of the course is to graduate students who are prepared to successfully perform entry-level security technician jobs.
The course is designed to be a capstone course to two years of network security coursework, or equivalent experience. To be prepared for this course, students must already have a solid, although perhaps theoretical, understanding of network security fundamentals, e.g., installation and configuration of firewalls and VPNs, security standards, PKI, TCP/IP, operating systems, et cetera. Students must already have basic programming skills, and should be able to do some scripting, e.g., in PERL. Because students will be working collaboratively on complex problems, they should also possess strong communication skills.
Our course takes a “Scenario-Based ” approach: The student is placed in a fictional scenario, or story, in which he or she assumes a real-world role and performs tasks associated with that role. Coached by faculty members (you) and provided with resources, students learn the targeted knowledge and skills just in time, as they are relevant to the students’ work.
In this course, the student is “hired” by C-Bay, a fictional online real estate auction house, as an entry-level security technician. The student is part of a larger security team (made up of their classmates and fictional scenario characters) charged with tightening up C-Bay’s enterprise security in the wake of problematic server outages. Working collaboratively, student teams, assuming their security technician roles, must critique and “bullet-proof” C-Bay’s security policy and its implementation, monitor the network, teach C-Bay’s employees to be security-minded, respond to help desk queries, and prepare for and respond to a security emergency--in this case, a hacker attack. In addition to developing the technical skills to complete these tasks, students will also refine communication skills by collaborating on a work team, performing help desk tasks, responding to emails, preparing reports, and making presentations.
During the twelve-week course, the students will get hands-on practice proposing changes to sections of a security policy, diagnosing problems in the network, recommending monitoring hardware and software, responding to help-desk inquiries, profiling a hacker, designing a security awareness campaign for employees, and preparing for potential emergencies. To achieve these goals, the teams will have to make presentations, submit problem reports, write cogent responses to user issues, write procedures, give reports, and develop a program to ensure that security policies are followed.
The course includes both classroom and online components that work in tandem. The online component is self-contained. Classroom activities complement and extend online tasks. On the course website, students receive their assignments in the form of emails from fictional characters. The course website also provides support for completing the tasks, including resources both internal and external to the website. Students submit their work to you, the mentor, via email. In the classroom, students work on tasks with their teammates, ask questions of you, give presentations to the rest of the class, and reflect on tasks. You, as instructor, answer student questions, share tips, and discuss key issues in the field. Student groups may also choose to work together outside of scheduled class time to complete deliverables.