Survivability and Information Assurance Curriculum
The National Guard asked the SEI to develop a Survivability and Information Assurance (SIA) Education for Systems Administrators curriculum appropriate for community colleges to offer its systems administrators. The resulting curriculum enabled the National Guard to encourage local community colleges to offer this program for National Guard Systems Administrators and to the colleges' broader student population.
Today’s organizations rely on networked systems powered by fast-changing technology. This reliance makes them more vulnerable to attacks and forces system administrators to seek new approaches to computer and network security. To help them, the CERT Division of the SEI developed a downloadable SIA curriculum.
This curriculum offers a problem-solving methodology built on key SIA principles that are independent of specific technologies. The curriculum describes the key foundations on which the curriculum is based and includes three core courses:
- Principles of Survivability and Information Assurance
- Information Assurance Networking Fundamentals
- Sustaining, Improving, and Building Survivable Functional Units
The following supplementary documents provide additional context to the curriculum:
- SIA Curriculum Overview — This document explains the key features of the SIA curriculum, including its audience, structure, the technology used, and the characteristics students and teachers should have to get the most out of the curriculum.
- SIA Lab Overview — This document describes the companion lab that prepares students for tasks in each of the three core courses. It also describes the hardware and software required for the lab in general as well as each specific course. It covers topics such as configuration management, user identity and privileges, and Internet connectivity.