Tentative Schedule

As IT Security is a very in depth topic, one semester is hardly enough time to cover all the major topics sufficiently, but as this is a traditional class in terms of time, I only have about 13 weeks to get through the book. I'm going to plan on finishing the material with a week or two to spare in order to build in a little buffer in case something takes longer than I originally planned. As such the following breakdown is going to act as the tentative schedule for the semester to help keep me pushing forward.

1. Week One
• Chapter 1:  Becoming a CISSP
• pgs 1-16
• Chapter 2: Security Trends
• pgs 17-44
2. Week Two
• Chapter 3: Information Security and Risk Management
• pgs 45-152
3. Week Three
• Chapter 4: Access Control
• pgs 153-280
4. Week Four
• Chapter 5: Security Architecture and Design
• pgs 281-400
5. Week Five
• Chapter 6: Physical and Environmental Security
• pgs 401-482
• Start on Chapter 7: Telecommunications and Network Security
6. Week Six
• Finish Chapter 7: Telecommunications and Network Security
• pgs 483-664
7. Week Seven
• Chapter 8: Cryptography
• pgs 665-776
8. Week Eight
• Chapter 9: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
• pgs 777-844
9. Week Nine
• Chapter 10: Legal, Regulations, Compliance, and Investigations
• pgs 845-920
10. Week Ten
• Chapter 11: Application Security
• pgs 921-1048
11. Week 11
• Chapter 12: Operations Security
• pgs 1049-1132

This schedule will hopefully allow for enough time to finish everything in the book within the time span of the semester. It will require a lot of reading, but hopefully there is enough time to get through all the material while gaining a grasp of the ideas.

CISSP Book

The book I have chosen for this study is the CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide, 5th Edition by Shon Harris. After speaking with several IT security professionals, I have settled on this book because of its moderate language difficulty and practicality. The book is broken down into twelve chapters and two appendices, which cover issues from what it means to be a CISSP to the more technical issues of different security areas.

Blog Goals

My name is Josh Mullis, and I am currently a 4th year student at the University of Georgia in the Terry School of Business. I am working on my Management Information Systems (MIS) major and minors in Computer Science and Portuguese. This might seem like an odd combination, but I have had an interest in Brazil for quite some time, and my plan is to work in the field of IT security consulting after graduation.

This fact that I have planned to work in this type of field has led me to take a slightly more technical route than most of my peers in the MIS department. To this end I have studied programming a little more in depth, and it is also why I am undertaking this directed study. The general theme of the study is the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), but what I really want out of this course is a general understanding of current IT security issues and best practices for dealing with them. I will be working my way through the CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide by Shon Harris. I will be further discuss the book in my next blog. I have an internship lined up with PWC in Atlanta this coming summer with their Security group, and I am hoping to be able to come in with, at the minimum, basic knowledge of terms and ideas. If, in the process of studying for this course, I can obtain a good grasp of the material, I might even try to sit for the certification at the end of the semester. Either way, it should be a good experience, and I look forward to seeing how this study goes.