Spring 2005

Spring 2005 is winding down and for me its been a very eventfull period. I have learnt and am still learning a lot at school and work. The second semester of my Doctoral Odyss, I am taking quite a load of courses; one independent study, 4 regular taught classes (one of them from JHU) and ofcourse dissertation guidiance.

Semester started on a very promising note. I held my first (and only so far) meeting with my Dissertation committee, presenting my plans : Open Architecture for Secure Electronic Voting System. I'll write about this meeting later and give feedback on how things are going.

Course I'm taking this semester are:

• Information Theory - (Taught by Dr. R. Dean/Based on Cover's book)
• Stochastic Search & Optimization(Dr. A. Rhodes/J. C. Spall's Book)
• Wireless Communications Systems (D. R. Dean/Several Sources)
• Advanced Topics in Information Security (-JHU Course: Dr. F. Monrose)
• Independent Study: Topics in Information Security Management (Several Texts/Lab work)
  

Ok, I'll talk about each of these in due course and how they contribute to the over all body of knoledge required for a succesfull dissertation (at least the way I see it) and aid in my daily work activities.

Work is another interesting thing. I'm responsible for the Information Security Architecture at Morgan State University and I have already put together a an Information Security Policy and going through the validation and adoption process. I have a few training arranged and my course works are definitely helping, to position me to deliver a continously improved and informed guidiance on protecting the network. I'll return to report some non-classified information on this in due course.

Another one for me. I was rececntly appointed GOLD representative for the IEEE region 2 (Meaning Mid-Atlantic US) and attended my first meeting tomorrow. I'll be attending my first P1363 meeting at NIST tomorrow. Previous meetings have been by teleconference. I realy look forward to this meeting. Hopefully it'll be as insightfull as I hope it turns out to be.

Well, enough gibbering for one day. I hope I have some more usefull information later.

Oh, before i go, I find the Doctoral Study some fun though challenging. Definitely less intimidating than most people will think....