Working on several aspects of operating systems security

Working on several aspects of operating systems security

Throughout this course you will be working on several aspects of operating systems security that will result in a complete Operating Systems Security Policies document for an organization of your choosing. Operating systems security is vital to the operation of the computer systems infrastructure in any organization and provides the protection of valuable data and information. Each week, you will complete a part of the Operating Systems Security Policies document, with the final draft due at the end of the course.

You will select an organization and apply your research to the analysis and development of operating systems security policies that would be appropriate for the organization and the needs it has for its systems. Additional information and the deliverables for each Individual Project will be provided in the assignment description for the project. This is the course Key Assignment that you will make contributions to each week.

Project Selection

The first step will be to select an organization as the target for your Operating Systems Security Policies document. This organization will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:

Nontrivial: The selected organization should be large enough to allow reasonable exercise of the operating systems security analysis process.

Domain knowledge: You should be familiar enough with the organization to allow focus on the project tasks without significant time required for domain education.

Accessibility: You should have good access to the people and other information related to the organization because this will be an important part of the process.

Note: The selected organization may already have operating systems security policies in place and may still be used as the basis for the projects in this course.

Note: The selected organization must have a need for some type of operating systems security as part of its operations. Therefore, you may feel free to identify a hypothetical organization that meets the requirements. Any necessary assumptions may be made by you to fulfill the requirements of organization selection.

Select an existing organization or identify a hypothetical organization that fits these requirements, and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding further with the assignments in the course. Approval should be sought within the first several days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.

Assignment

For the assignments in this course, you will not be implementing an operating systems security policy; rather, you will be developing a comprehensive operating systems security policies document. Your first task in this process will be to select an organization or identify a hypothetical organization to use as the basis of your projects. You will also create the shell document for the final project deliverable that you will be working on during each unit. As you proceed through each project phase, you will add contents to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project delivery. Appropriate research should be conducted to support the development of your document, and assumptions may be made when necessary.

The following are the project deliverables:

Submit the organization proposal to your instructor for approval.

Operating Systems Security Policies document shell

Use MS Word

Title Page

Course number and name

Project name

Student name

Date

Table of Contents

Use autogenerated TOC

Separate page

Maximum of 3 levels deep

Be sure to update fields of TOC so it is up-to-date before submitting project

Section Headings (Create each heading on a new page with TBD as the content except for the sections listed under New Content below.)

Project Outline

Operating System Security Tools

Security Threat Detection

Secure Communications

Virus Protection

Security Management

New Content

Project Outline and Requirements

Give a brief description of the organization (can be hypothetical) where the operating systems security policies will be implemented. Include company size, location(s), and other pertinent information.

Identify the systems in the organization (i.e., the type and number of computer systems and operating systems used, along with a top-level view of the infrastructure). A network diagram would be useful for this purpose, but the diagram should be pasted into your Word document.

Your project must assume that the organization has UNIX, open source, and Windows operating systems in its computing environment, so be sure to include all 3 categories in the systems overview.

Identify and describe any outside connections to the internal systems.

Summarize the benefits the company would realize through the implementation of operating systems security policies.

Material can be taken from the approved proposal submitted to the instructor.

Be sure that this project is approved by the instructor.

Operating System Security Tools

Based on the systems overview, identify and describe at least 3 security tools for each OS category (UNIX, open source, and Windows) that can be used at the operating system level to protect the systems, users, and data from security threats.

The tools can be part of the OS or third-party tools. Some examples would include firewalls, account management, and port access management.