CSC 429: Computer Security

CSC 429
Semester: First semester 1447H - Fall 2025
Course title: Computer Security
Credit hours: 3
Instructor: Dr. Iehab AL Rassan  [e-mail]

Office: 2179

Office Phone: [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

Office Hours: Monday 1 P.M –2 P.M, (This might change – always check my home page first)

Course website :Section1 (10 AM to 12) :https://piazza.com/ksu.edu.sa/fall2025/csc429sec1

                          

Course Objectives
The objective of this course is to provide the fundamentals of theories and methods of computer security including maintaining  confidentiality, availability and integrity, threat and vulnerabilities. In addition, it introduces method of public-key encryption, symmetric encryption, access control, user authentication, security policy, risk assessments, network security, operating system security, and intrusion detection systems.

Pre-requisites
CSC 329: Computer Networks

Main Textbooks
[1] Computer Security: Principles and Practice, W. Stallings and L. Brown, 5th 
Edition, 2023,  ISBN 9780138091675.
Additional Textbooks
[2] Introduction to Cryptography and Network Security, Behrouz A. Forouzan, 
ISBN-13 9780073327532, McGraw-Hill Forouzan networking series
[3] Introduction to Computer Security, Matt Bishop, 1st Edition, 2004, ISBN-
13: 978-0321247445.
[4] Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems, 
Ross J. Anderson ,3rd Edition, 2020, ISBN-13: 978-1119642787.
[5] Principles of Information Security, M. Whitman and H. Mattord, 6th Edition, 
2017, ISBN-13: 978-1337102063.

Course Schedule
14 weeks of three 50-minute lectures per week, in addition to 14 of 50-minute 
tutorials.

 

Grading :

Assignments: 10
Project: 15
Quizzes: 10
Midterm: 25
Final: 40

Assignments :

- You have to post one question and its answer on the course website after every lecture. Also, you are required to evaluate someone else’s posted question and its answer from the previous lecture, giving score out of 5.

- All other assignments will be posted on LMS.

Note: Homework and projects are due at the beginning of class time on the date they        are due. They WILL NOT be accepted otherwise.

Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs)
The students will be able to:
1. Describe principles, requirements, and policies of computer security.
2. Recognize and differentiate the different types of security threats, attacks 
and their implications.
3. Define and compare the various access control techniques.
4. Explain and analyze symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms and 
their applications in digital signatures, and authentication.
5. Identify the major risk assessment approaches, techniques and tools used 
to discover network, web, and system vulnerabilities and their 
countermeasures.
6. Demonstrate ability to effectively communicate principles and policies of 
security, and explain their applications in various contexts through class 
presentation, assignments and course project.

Expected Performance Criteria
The students are expected to solve theoretical and practical questions in tutorials, programming project, pass midterm exam, and final exam  based on class materials.

Course Policies
• Students who miss more than 25% of lectures will be denied from entering the final exam.
• No late assignments will be accepted.
• Plagiarism and cheating in exams, assignments or project are NOT tolerated and will results in receiving ZERO in the activity and may result in FAILING the course. In such event, King Saud University policies on plagiarism will be exercised.
• Submitting AI-generated content in assignments or project is considered plagiarism.