Security Engineering  COMP3441

FromDan's Comp electives

originally by Richard Buckland. Ron van der Meyden has been taking it but this year (15s2) it will be Richard again. With Ron, it was a course with good content and a shitty lecturer. Since Richard's thing is security, I imagine it'll be a very fun and extremely disorganised course this year. I've heard good things about when Richard last ran it.

Took this course in 15s2 with Buckland, and it's one of the worst courses I've ever taken. I didn't learn a single thing about security. The course is extremely disorganised and poorly run, and the content of the tutorials is rubbish. The only positive thing I'd say is that the workload is low. 0/10 would not recommend.
I disagree ^ I thought it was awesome! 11/10 Would love to come back as a tutor and sit in the lectures. Some of the seminars were boring but there were some awesome ones like lock picking, honey pots, wireless sniffing and rootkits.

Very disorganized. No technical stuff is taught in this course. In tute, you just discuss some random stuff not even related to cyber. Strongly un-recommended. Very little is taught in a 4 hour lecture. Basically you see a fancy noun in the bulletin-style lecture note, then google it and teach yourself.

There is one funny thing called Job Application which accounts for 35% percent of the final mark. What you learn in making the application is how to bullshit and make yourself look good on the so-called portfolio. Imagine a course teach you nothing, and you have to say what you learned and demonstrated in the class. That's what it feels like.

This is by far the worst course I have ever done at UNSW. Can't believe that people pay for this. Lectures notify you of some cool things, but you don't learn anything about implementation. The tutors are horrible (I'm pretty sure they do absolutely nothing), don't mark, get nothing done and mine didn't even show up to some tutes. Absolute mess of a course 0/10 would not recommend even to my worst enemy.

^ I disagree. The course was exactly what I expected it to be, the lectures and some seminars were great.

shit course, completely high level on security and too many example scenarios that weren't technical. Basically a course that you learn all the low level security yourself and even at that, it's not that low level (for exam).

One of the best courses (if not the best) at this uni. ABsolutly brilliant really challenges how you think, and its with Richard so the lecturers are extreamly enjoyable and there are optional movies afterwards. In 15s2 Richard actually brought a rifle to the lecture to demonstrate some security concepts. ABsolutly amazing course
If you want to actually be good at security this is the course to take. Also you learn stuff like lock picking, tor, crypto and a little bit of everything else security.

- Doing it now (as of Semester 1, 2016) - it's a VERY VERY general security course - hence thats why this course doesn't have prerequisities. You don't learn just about cyber security, you learn about security in general (e.g. how padlocks work). As somebody mentioned here, in one tutorial for example - we've learnt about the 2011 Tusmani in Japan, and discussed it's costs and effects?? The whole openlearning (poor UI imo and very buggy/laggy at times) stuff is very confusing, and hard to follow what you have to do over the course since its scattered everywhere - which I don't like. To be honest, this isn't a very hard course as it's not very technical - especially the Job Application assessment part of the course. Also, I don't like the hours for this class! (Mon 5 - 9 pm) :( The lecturer, Richard Buckland on the other hand, is a terrific and committed guy, that cares for each and everyone in the course, which is great +++ ! I look forward for COMP9447 in Semester 2 :)

- Not a good course overall, I'm writing this 2 days before the final exam and have a hard time knowing what is in the exam! Very disorganised as someone said above a semester ago! I'm fairly opened to all areas of CS, but this course was no good. Open Learning experience makes it even worse. I don't like how there are no real lecture notes, I had to look up another lecturer (Ron) and his notes are far more understandable than the raw notes given on open learning since its all over the place! Should have taken that Human Interaction course instead.

People are all over the place on this one...
....... soooo is this elective good or bad??!?!?!? - Good, just very disorganised. If you don't like Richard courses, don't bother. This course will reward those who love diving into stuff in their own time. Yes it's easy to do well in, but if you want to get a lot out of this course it won't be spoonfed to you.

Took the course in 15s2 when it was ran by Buckland. I personally thought the course was way too high level/broad, it supported logical thinking when approaching a problem (which is good), but not enough concrete/applicable content was learnt for it to be useful. The course was overall extremelly unorganized, and tutorials weren't useful, but did bring about fun/interesting discussion. You'll probably enjoy the course if you like Richard Buckland (I feel like people treat him to a near exalted level), and/or don't mind lots and lots of thinking/talking about a problem. You won't like this course if you want to learn something directly applicable (OS is a perfect example of a course which is mostly that), or if you don't like Richard's lecturing style (lots of anecdotes/interesting content that he talks about plenty, but without moving in any particular direction, almost like the course itself). 3/10