Plenty of choice in Master of IT degree
Students in the Master of Information Technology at Macquarie University have the option each year of studying a special subject on emerging technologies delivered by an industry expert.
The content of the Special Topic in Information Technology unit varies from year to year, depending on industry developments and the availability of particular (often industrially based) expertise. Special topic units present novel material of current interest and provide a context within which students may engage with emerging technologies and trends as they arise.
Enterprise architecture
For example, Regional Director of Intel Solutions Services in Australia and New Zealand, Pascal Grant will be teaching the Enterprise Architecture Special Topic in second semester this year.
Enterprise architecture is the art and science of designing complex software and information systems to meet current and future business requirements. These architectures can be viewed from both a business process management perspective, from a software/service design perspective (service oriented architectures), as well as from an implementation viewpoint.
The subject introduces students to fundamental concepts in enterprise architecture and agile design, ensuring that participants can correctly align business goals to software design and implementation in their own organisations.
Software vulnerabilities
Students taking the Special Topic this semester are enjoying learning about Vulnerabilities of Commercial Operating Systems.
This course looks in detail at the commercial operating systems Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows 2003, HP/UX11i, Solaris10, Red Hat Linux, IBM MVS, IBM OS400 and OpenVMS and explores how secure they are in a commercial environment.
The course includes hands-on tutorials on most of the operating systems and also includes threat and vulnerability analysis of common configurations. As operating systems provide the environment upon which all application processing is based, knowing the strengths and weaknesses will help in understanding how to make commercial environments more secure.
For more information about study opportunities in IT, visit www.ics.mq.edu.au/postgrad/