Singapore, 26 September 2011 (Monday) – The Singapore Management University's (SMU) School of Information Systems (SIS) will sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday, 27 September 2011 to develop a new undergraduate course on information security management and collaborate on information security research and development projects. These initiatives are in line with Singapore's national efforts to beef up the talent pool of cyber security professionals to support the increasing demand for such expertise, and strengthen Singapore's position as a trusted hub for high-end information technology (IT) services in the long term.
The new undergraduate course on information security management will provide an enhanced, active learning experience for students by marrying MHA's extensive expertise in dealing with real-world cyber threats with SMU's depth of information security R&D capabilities and flair for designing problem-based pedagogy materials, including the generation of realistic scenarios for simulated learning.
The MHA-SMU jointly-developed course materials will reinforce and expand on the fundamental concepts of cyber security systems that SMU SIS students are already being exposed to. Besides providing training in threat assessment as well as intrusion detection, response and recovery, the course will offer additional ways to explore and investigate how cyber security systems can be applied to real-life situations. For example, active learning laboratories will be introduced to enable the students to hone their technical and problem-solving abilities in the context of interesting scenarios.
Professor Steven Miller, Dean of SMU SIS, said, “We are embracing this opportunity to work with MHA because it involves three elements that are critically important to SMU SIS: (1) exploring new developments in information security technology and applications; (2) teaching IT and information security using methods that are deeply contextualized in business, organizational and societal settings and scenarios; and (3) creating new, novel and motivating learning experiences and methods of competency development. Working together with MHA, we will create new educational materials that will bring all three of these elements together.”
In time to come, SMU will also be looking into the development of postgraduate courses to provide advanced and specialized knowledge and training in cyber security. In addition, SMU will collaborate with MHA to identify projects in information protection, network and systems security, the Internet of Things*, and cloud computing security for research and development, or consultancy work.
Professor Robert Deng, Associate Dean (Faculty and Research), SMU SIS, said, “The increasing incidents and growing sophistication of cyber security threats present a serious risk to Singapore's economy, society and national security. The recent setting up of the National Cyber Security Centre by the Singapore Infocomm Technology Security Authority (SITSA) in MHA, shows that the Government recognizes the importance of putting in place defensive measures at the national level. SMU's collaboration with SITSA will reinforce these measures by ensuring that there will be a ready supply of properly trained cyber security professionals to build, maintain and monitor Singapore's cyber security systems as the first line of defence against cyber threats. The R&D work undertaken by SMU and MHA will also ensure that these early efforts in cyber defence will be augmented by initiatives that will take Singapore to the next level of cyber security preparedness and develop it eventually into a trusted hub for high-end information technology services, including cyber security services.”
Added Professor Miller, “The new cyber security initiatives at SMU SIS will focus on addressing data security and privacy challenges in three increasingly important contexts – cloud computing; the Internet of Things*; and business, consumer and societal analytics. The new research initiatives will be pursued by studying and designing robust and scalable solutions, and by working with real systems and data. The ultimate aim of SMU SIS is to work closely with the Singapore Government, the private sector and other local research institutions to make Singapore one of the world's pre-eminent centres of excellence in data security and privacy research.”
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*The concept of the “Internet of Things” became popular through the Auto-ID Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is dedicated to the creation of the “Internet of Things” using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Networks.
Currently, the Internet is a network of computers, each with an identifying label consisting of an unique number called an Internet Protocol (IP) address.
The vision of the Internet of Things is to attach tiny devices to every single object to make it identifiable by its own unique IP address. These devices can then autonomously communicate with one another.
The success of the Internet of Things relies on overcoming the following technical challenges:
- The current manner of using IP addresses must change to a system that provides an IP address to every possible object that may need one in the future.
- The power behind the embedded chips on such devices will need to be smaller and more efficient.
- The software applications must be developed that can communicate with and manage the stream of data from hundreds of interconnected non-computing devices that comprise a 'smart' system which can adapt and respond to changes.
Example
With the implementation of such devices on every object, a medicine cabinet may be continuously aware of the status of each medicine bottle stored inside the cabinet such as its name, contraindications and expiry date. Also, engineers may be able to query each cable in a suspension bridge to determine the extent of fatigue wear.
Source : The Financial Times Lexicon
About the SMU School of Information Systems
The SMU School of Information Systems (SIS) was created in 2003 to extend SMU's research and education efforts into the areas of information systems technology, information systems management, and problems at the intersection of information systems technology and management.
SIS is distinct from the other five schools at SMU in that it is the only academic unit within the university classified under Singapore's Science and Technology cluster of academic units, as defined by the Ministry of Education.
The School possesses deep technology-based research and creation capability in four strategically selected areas of information technology systems and applications, information security and trust, data management and analytics, intelligent systems and decision analytics, and software systems. The fifth strategic area of the School is information systems and management, which investigates a range of issues related to the managerial and business impact of information technology (IT) within firms, and across collaboration networks, value chains, markets and industries. www.sis.smu.edu.sg