Open Education Week

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open educational resources • open education week • oeweek • security • cyber security
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A textbook that I wrote, Computer Systems Security: Planning for Success, is going to be featured during OEWeek! This scope, sequence, and need for this textbook came about through an NJIT Open and Affordable Textbook (OAT) grant. It was completed and piloted through an Open Textbook Collaborative (OTC) grant. The OTC is funded through the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) program.

The goal is to provide an introductory text for students that roughly aligns with the CompTIA Security+ SY0-601 exam. It is currently used in my IT230 classes at NJIT and has been published and cataloged in the OER Commons digital library. The topics include:

  • An Introduction to Cyber Security

  • Cryptography

  • Malware

  • Protocols

  • Attacks

  • Security Solutions

  • Access Controls

  • Vulnerability Management and Compliance

  • Incident Response and Continuity

  • Virtualization

Each chapter includes review questions and a lab exercise, several of which use Docker to provide a virtual environment for experimentation with security tools. It’s my sincere hope that this resource makes it easier for college to offer introductory cyber security training at a lower cost to students. To that end, I’m very excited to be a part of OE Week and raise awareness about this resource.

If you’re interested you can follow the continued development of this project and learn how its all put together on its GitHub page.