Information is one of the major assets of any organization or business. Security and Information Assurance are recognized as critical issues in In formation Technology today. This talk presents some of these issues with an emphasis on their business impacts. It describes Information Assurance: the operations that protect information and information systems by ensuring information availability, integrity, and confidentiality. Typical vulnerabilities and attack techniques, and the corresponding safeguards and defenses will be described.

Manu Malek is Director of the Certificate in CyberSecurity Program at Stevens Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Stevens full time in October 2001, he was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, and an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering/Computer Science/Technology Management at Stevens. He has more than 20 years of experience in teaching, practicing, and research in telecommunication networks design, optimization, operations, and management. He has held various academic positions in the US and overseas, as well as technical management positions with Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies) and AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is the author, co-author, or editor of six books, co-holder of two patents, and the author or co-author of over fifty published technical papers and numerous internal technical reports in the areas of network design, computer communications, and network operations and management. Dr. Malek is a fellow of the IEEE, an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer, and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Network and Systems Management. He earned his Ph.D. in EE/CS from University of California, Berkeley.