The Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), a designated Center of Academic Excellence, is the umbrella organization covering research and education in information security, information assurance, critical information infrastructure protection (IS/IA/CIIP) and related subjects across the Institute. Participating faculty and relevant degree programs exist in the College of Computing, which has a curriculum that supports a fully dedicated Master of Science in IS and about 30 PhD students in IS/IA; the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE); and the Sam Nunn School (SNS), including the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy (CISTP) that coverers technology-related homeland, national, and international security studies. In addition to about 10 courses that are wholly or largely dedicated to IS/IA/CIIP, these and other units offer a rich selection of graduate courses on networks, operating systems, software engineering, wireless communications, sensors, fault tolerance, risk and cost-benefit analyses, e-government, Human Computer Interaction, security analysis and policy, and telecommunications policy. The GTISC core has about a dozen faculty members, and approximately 30 additional faculty and research staff have serious interests in IS/IA/CIIP.
During the current SFS program, several lessons have been learned that shape and focus the present proposal towards educating high quality, technically educated students in one of two Master's programs. One is in IS, and the other concentrates on policy and homeland/national/international security. The latter includes such areas as CIIP, criminal and terrorist use of cyberspace, international cooperation in dealing with cyber security problems, critical information systems for dealing with epidemics and other biologically-oriented threats, and IT-related security policies at several levels. Among students in the SNS, there is a pool of high achieving students, more than half women, with good communications skills, and a high percentage of clearable US citizens. They are particularly sensitive to people and policy issues in cyber security, and have no trouble taking a core of 3-4 technical IS/IA courses. Measured by academic performance and placement, they have proven to be the most successful contingent of SFS students we have had. All of them became interested in IS/IA/CIIP and government service because of the SFS program.
