Practice Module for Securing Ubiquitous Systems

Objectives

The objective of the practice module is twofold:

• Firstly, to expose participants to real world problems so that they may practice the use of the skills they have learned during the component courses in a holistic manner.

• Secondly, to enable participants to demonstrate their proficiency across all of the skills that they have learned in the course modules and hence obtain a grade at the Graduate Certificate Level.

Intended Audience

This practice module is targeted at participants who wish to complete the certification process for the Graduate Certificate in “Securing Ubiquitous Systems”.

Prerequisites

Participants must have successfully obtained a competent score  (or have been exempted from) the four component courses for the Graduate Certificate in Securing Ubiquitous Systems as listed in the introduction to the Graduate Certificate page.

Components

There are two parts to the Practice Module.

1. Practice Project: Participants will need to undertake one or more projects to gain practical experience and demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the skills taught in the four component courses. The practice project will require each participant to expend an estimated 10 days of effort. These days are not expected to be contiguous and may stretch over many weeks. These projects may be conducted by individual participants or in teams depending on the nature of the project requirements.
2. Examination: Each participant is required to sit for an examination on a stipulated date and time.
3. The overall grade for the participant will be based on the Practice project and Examination.

      Typical examples of projects to be undertaken

1. Problem description:

A food delivery company would like to open up its internally operated delivery platform to public customers and third party delivery providers. This requires exposing its existing internal services to applications and/or services offered by other parties on the internet. This would also require the creation of suitable web-based and mobile client applications as well as allowing direct access by third party consumer/provider applications. The security architecture of the platform needs to be analysed, architected, designed and reviewed to ensure that systems, data, network and other infrastructure of the platform are adequately protected.

Deliverables and success criteria:

• Identify and formulate the security requirements of the platform.
• Perform threat modelling to identify the threats of the platform.
• Prescribe adequate security controls to address the vulnerabilities of the platform.
• Document and review the security architecture of the platform.
• Devise test cases and verify the effectiveness of the security controls.

   

• Problem description:

 

Another potential project can be to build a multi-platform messaging service. The application can be used on smart-phones, tablets, desktops and mobile phones. The backend of the messaging application can be built using microservices architecture with different technology stacks and databases. Applications frameworks are used where relevant on top of the application platforms to enhance the productivity of the team and quality of the application. The security architecture of the end-to-end distributed application has to be analysed, designed and reviewed to ensure that subsystems, data, network and other infrastructure of the platform are adequately protected.

Deliverables and success criteria:

• Identify and formulate the security requirements of the application.
• Perform threat modelling to identify the threats of the application.
• Prescribe adequate security controls to address the vulnerabilities of the application.
• Document and review the security architecture of the application.
• Devise test cases and verify the effectiveness of the security controls.

Some popular real-world examples of types of projects to be considered are as follows:

1) PayLah

2) Telegram

3) LifeSmart

Application (For Stackable Students)

• Participants are only allowed to take the practice module after completing all courses in the Grad Cert.
• Participants who wish to take the practice module concurrently in the same semester with the courses in the same Grad Cert must write to ask-iss@nus.edu.sg citing reasons by the application deadline. Email requests received after the deadline will not be considered. Requests will be reviewed after the deadline and approved on a case-by-case basis.
• Participants who miss the application window will have to apply for the practice module in the next semester.
• Participants who do not attend the briefing will be withdrawn from the practice module.