Computer/Network Security

Final Projects

The final projects in this class are intended to allow a great deal of flexibility for the individual student (or small group of students) to define a research or programming area that most interests them.  As such, we define the two very broad categories of final projects as research projects and programming projects.  One could also imagine hybrid projects that are part research but also have a programming or implementation component.  Even the projects that are mostly programming based will have a paper to be written, albeit shorter than the paper that is the outcome of a research project.

Students may work individually, or in a group of 2 or 3, depending on the scope.  A group project should have a substantially more ambitious scope than an individual project.

Recall that the final project is 25% of your final grade calculation in this class.

Project milestones

Project Proposal

The project proposal needs to define the scope of what you are trying to accomplish.  It should be one to two (single spaced) pages long.  The core of the project proposal is the project description.  Use two to four paragraphs to describe the goal(s) of your project.  There should be no ambiguity about whether this project includes a programming/implementation component.

The remainder of the project proposal depends on what type of project is being proposed.  For a research project, this should include an initial literature search and annotated bibliography on the topic.  For a programming project, this should include a set of well-defined milestones to be met at weekly intervals.  In addition, a programming project should specify any required resources so that we can make sure they are met early on.

Project Presentation

Plan on presenting the basic ideas of your project to the rest of the class in one of the last two sessions of the class.  While your project may not be complete, it should be well on its way by this time frame.  These presentations are relatively short (you should target about 15 minutes).

Presentations should be self-contained, and should be clear and precise. Briefly introduce the topic including any background information, describe the investigation, development, or experimentation that was conducted (either complete or still planned), and provide any demonstrations developed as part of the project, or describe the results of the investigation or experimentation. The following format is suggested:

Research Project

The research category of project is a 10 to 12 page research paper. The paper should be in postscript (or pdf) or html. The paper should examine issues or technologies in computer or network security. Typically, your report might be organized as follows:

1. abstract
2. introduction -- background information, literature search, scope and limitations of project
3. body -- methods used
4. analysis and conclusions
5. recommendations -- future work, unsolved problems
6. references -- journals, WWW references

If a research project is done as a team project, the results should be more significant and the paper to cover those results appropriately longer.

Also be very careful about citing your sources.  Plagiarism is stealing or passing off the ideas or words of another as one's own -- using material without crediting the source. This is prohibited behavior and will not be tolerated. Take the time to properly cite material written by someone else -- include references, put verbatim quotes in quotation marks, and do not paraphrase excessively. If you have questions about this, ask me.

Programming Project

As mentioned above, a programming project must also include a shorter (4-5 page) paper detailing the related work and ideas behind the programming project.  In addition, you will need to provide me with a hard-copy of well documented code and a CD-R with your code.  You will also need to schedule a demonstration of your software.  I will post the schedule of demonstrations to this web page so that other classmates may attend as well.

Final Comments

The research and the programming projects will be graded on quality of research, quality of presentation, and strength of references. Original research counts more than a critical review which counts more than a mere survey paper. Actually implementing and testing things counts more than reporting on someone else's experiments/results.

I have already given you a list of project ideas from Stallings.  A link to that can be found here.

A list of additional possible topics follow.  These were pulled from a class page out of the University of Tennessee.

Programming Projects