GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
Graduate Council MODIFIED/DELETED Certificate, Concentration, Track, or Degree Program
Coordination/Approval Form
(Please complete this form and attach any related materials. Forward it as an email attachment to the Secretary
of the Graduate Council. A printed copy of the form with signatures should be brought to the Graduate Council
Meeting. If no coordination with other units is requires, simply indicate “None” on the form.
Title of Program/Certificate, etc: Information Security and Assurance
Level (Masters/Ph.D.): Masters
Please Indicate: X Program ______ Certificate
_______ Concentration
_______ Track
Description of the change in the certificate, concentration or degree program:
Rationale for Revised Information Security and Assurance (MS-ISA)
Curriculum
It is proposed to make a major revision to the MS Program in Information Security and Assurance (ISA). This
document summarizes the changes and provides a rationale for the changes.
1. The main reasons for the revisions to the MS-ISA degree are to align the degree more closely with the MS
in Computer Science (MSCS) and decouple it from the MS in Information Systems (MSIS) degree. In
addition, there is a renumbering of the course levels. This revision is motivated by the proposed merger of
the CS and ISE Departments, which provides an opportunity for the two departments to rationalize their
graduate course offerings and to provide a more technical grounding for students in the MS-ISA program.
2. Proposal for a revised Graduate Certificate in Information Security and Assurance, which is consistent with
changes to the MS-ISA degree.
3. A set of course proposals for the following new MS-ISA courses.
Course
ISA 562 Information Security Theory and
Practice
ISA 564 Security Laboratory
ISA 640: Programming Language Security
ISA 650: Security Policy
ISA 656: Network Security
ISA 673: Operating Systems Security
ISA 674: Intrusion Detection
ISA 681: Secure Software Design
ISA 763: Security Protocol Analysis
ISA 764: Security Experimentation
New or Modified
Modified version of ISA 662
New
New
New
Modified version of ISA 666
New
Modified version of ISA 774
New
New
New
4. A proposal to renumber the existing course ISA 774 Intrusion Detection to be ISA 674 Intrusion Detection
and to modify the pre-requisites of this course to be ISA 562 and ISA 656 (instead of the discontinued ISA
662 and ISA 666).
5. The following existing ISA courses will continue as currently defined in the catalog.
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ISA 697 Topics in Information Security
ISA 796 Directed Readings in Information Security
ISA 797 Advanced Topics in Information Security
ISA 798 Research Project
ISA 799 Thesis
6. The following existing ISA courses will be discontinued as of Fall 2007. The final offering of any of these
courses will be in Spring 2007.
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ISA 662 Information Systems Security (to be replaced by ISA 562)
ISA 666 Internet Security Protocols(to be replaced by ISA 656)
ISA 780 Theoretical Foundations of System Security
ISA 774 Intrusion Detection (to be replaced by ISA 674)
Approval from other units:
Please list those units outside of your own who may be affected by these. Each of these units must approve this
change prior to its being submitted to the Graduate Council for approval.
Unit:
Head of Unit’s Signature:
Date:
Unit:
Head of Unit’s Signature:
Date:
Unit:
Head of Unit’s Signature:
Date:
Unit:
Head of Unit’s Signature:
Date:
Submitted by: Prof Ravi Sandhu
Email: sandhu@gmu.edu
Graduate Council approval:____________________________________ Date: _____________
Graduate Council representative: ________________________________ Date: _____________
Provost Office representative: __________________________________ Date: _____________