Projekt

Information security is an important field within computer science, with relevance also for everyday life. Besides theoretical and conceptual knowledge, students also need hands-on-knowledge on how to install, configure and administrate the tools of the trade like firewalls, intrusion detection systems, etc. To this end, the chair of Parallelism and VLSI of faculty MI offers a lab on information security with 5 lab stations corresponding to the selected tools. Instead of using physical machines, the lab is virtual, i.e. uses virtual machines (which eases set-back in case of misconfiguration) and allows working from home which also already (in principle) enables the use by other, remote parties. As information security is a field in constant change, lab stations -- in order to be timely and attractive for students -- must be updated frequently and new lab stations must be offered if needed. The latter can be very labor-intensive, in particular if expertise in special sub-fields is not at hand.

The project partners (TU Warsaw, ISSIA/CNR Genova) possess this expertise in the field of multimedia security (e.g. Voice-over-IP) and information hiding (e.g. covert channels) and are willing to contribute one such new lab station from each partner. Yet, it is needed to integrate them into the existing lab infrastructure. At the same time, the project partners are interested in getting access to the existing lab stations in order to also offer a similar lab, either in times when the infrastructure is not used by the FernUni lab, or in a joint lab course. To achieve this, the existing lab stations will have to be translated into english language. At the same time, they can be updated to the latest versions of standards and tools. Finally, if the partners are to offer labs of their own, an english manual for teaching personnel must be provided.

The proposed project enables FernUni students to get access to further relevant tools of information security, which could not be provided without the contribution from the international partners. At the same time, a joint lab course with student groups mixed over the partners enriches the student experience with respect to language and cultural issues, which in distance education only seldomly is possible.

Partner: Warsaw Technical University, Poland Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation (ISSIA) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Genova, Italy

Duration: from May 01, 2017 till May 31, 2019