ITS 277 - Software Assurance and File System Internals

Credit(s): 3

Prerequisite(s): ITS 210, ITS 218.
This course provides advanced technical information and relevant skills to methodically secure software, including operating systems, custom application software, and commercially-available packages. Students will classify application software (including, but not limited to customer-facing, employee/partner, mobile/endpoint, database, and cloud-based), and perform risk analyses and common weakness assessments against these programs. Students will research various commercial, professional, and governmental security organizations and create a personalized repository of security-related checklists, toolkits, reference material, and resources. Students will investigate low-level file system structures such as master file tables, allocation tables, free space tables, file table entries, and metadata fields. Using common file signatures and checksums, students will verify internal content against external and metadata indicators. Students will examine ‘hidden’ disk space areas, including file, volume, and/or partition slack. Course content will focus on business-focused security practices. (Intermittently)