Term Paper Requirements
REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING
Each student will be required to write their own research paper – no teaming, partnering, or study group papers are permitted. This is an individual assignment and copying or plagiarizing will not be tolerated and will be subject to University disciplinary action up to and including a failing grade for this course.
The paper shall be at least five (5) and no more than ten (10) pages in length excluding figures, tables, and references. The paper shall be formatted using an 11-point font of either Arial, Helvetica, or Times Roman type using 1″ margins on the sides and double-spacing between lines with 0.5″ indentation on first line of paragraphs.
The paper shall be written using the APA style guide seventh edition published in October 2019. Online guidance can be viewed at https://apastyle.apa.org.
All tables and figures shall be captioned and specifically referenced in the body of the document. All references shall be stated and included as endnotes in this paper. Citations must meet the following requirements:
- No more than two (2) citations shall be from Wikipedia
- At least two (2) references shall be from United States government sites (e.g. CISA, NIST)
- At least two (2) references from vendor web (html) or printed (pdf) material
- At least two (2) references shall be from independent sources including but not limited to
- News Media Outlets (e.g. Reuters, Washington Post, Wired, CSOOnline)
- Industry Publications (e.g. Automation, ISSSource, Control)
- Trade Sources (e.g. Oil and Gas Journal, ChemWeek, PharmaTimes)
- Security Solution Providers (e.g. McAfee, Trend Micro, Dragos, Claroty) to name several.
A template has been provided meeting these requirements.
A list of 11 different vendors and systems have been offered. Selection begins on October 6, 2020 (Week 7) and is expected to be completed by November 17, 2020 (Week 13). You are free to change your selection until the cut-off date. No more than three (3) students can choose the same vendor and system topic, so all selections may not be available at any given time. Failure to complete the selection process early could reduce the number of choices available and not provide sufficient time to complete the term paper and associated presentation.
You will also be required to prepare a short PowerPoint presentation summarizing your paper suitable for presentation. This presentation is expected to have no more than one (1) slide summarizing each of the subject areas aligning with the paper and should be limited to 15 minutes. A PowerPoint template has been prepared and is available for download.
Your paper must be submitted by 7:00pm (end of class) on Tuesday, November 24, 2020 (Week 14), and your presentation must be submitted by 8:00am on Tuesday, December 1, 2020 (Week 15). Eight (8) students will be randomly selected to present their presentation via Zoom Meeting during class time on Tuesday, December 1, 2020. Drawing will occur on December 1, and students will be notified by 10:00am.
The term research paper and associated presentation comprise 20% of your overall course grade and will be assigned a numerical percentage grade based on the following scale:
A = 90% – 100%
B = 80% – 89%
C = 70% – 79%
D = 60% – 69%
F = 59% or less
Grading for term research paper and associated presentation will be based on the following metrics:
20% = Ideas and Analysis
20% = Organization
20% = Development and Support
10% = Style
20% = Mechanics
10% = Presentation
Spelling and grammatical correctness will be used as marking against Mechanics. Use of current review editors such as those included with Microsoft Word are strongly encouraged.
CONTENTS AND STRUCTURE
The term research paper and associated presentation should be logically divided into sections that follow sound research paper style and address each of the following areas. You are free to organization the paper and presentation as appropriate, however a template has been provided for both the paper and presentation to help start the initial paper structure. The section titles (paper) and slide titles (presentation) in the templates are for reference only.
Your paper and presentation shall address and develop each of the following items:
- System overview (textual) and architecture (graphical) covering devices and network topology explaining the function of each of the key assets
- Communication protocols used by the system
- Industry sectors that use the system
- Vulnerabilities publicly disclosed for the system and the publication of any exploitation packages
- Potential or actual impact of the vulnerabilities discovered to the industry sectors served
- Cyber security measures taken by the vendor to secure the system
- Additional cyber security measures that could be taken by the end-user user if the vendor recommendations are not feasible (e.g. an upgrade could not be performed in a timely manner)