Purdue, Intel Collaboration to Focus on ‘Design for Security’

Purdue and Intel announced the collaboration this week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. (photo courtesy Intel/Matt H. King)

A new collaboration between Purdue University and Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) aims to make security a core principle in the development of future products and technologies. The university says the "Design for Security" badge program will show the importance of incorporating security into every level of system design.

Purdue is offering the ability to earn the "Design For Security" badge through a series of courses available on the West Lafayette campus and online beginning this fall. Mung Chang, dean of Purdue’s College of Engineering, says the security-first approach needs to become part of all areas of technology and commerce, from design to manufacturing to distribution.

Rick Echevarria, vice president of the Software and Services Group at Intel, says the need for "design for security" is prevalent in all industries, not just software, where this security-first approach is already happening.

"Nearly every day we hear about a new cyberattack impacting businesses and often thousands of individuals," said Echevarria. "To exacerbate this situation, we have a well-documented cyber security talent shortage. It is time for us to accelerate the availability of security-minded professionals that can meet this challenge."

Purdue says, in order to receive the "Design for Security" badge, students must complete coursework in four courses: 

• Foundations of secure development, which introduces the need for secure software development, as well as the basics of security, privacy, authentication (including biometrics) and cryptography, which can help informed application designs.
• Secure design life cycle, which introduces a process to build an application from its inception to its decommission, including the architecture design, development, testing, and the evaluation metric.
• Secure operations, which introduces the principles of effective security operations, and includes the concepts of monitoring, incidence response, forensics, ethics and legal considerations, product end of life and disposal.
• Security applications, which introduces different example applications of secure designs like databases, web security, apps, cloud computing, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, and blockchain.

Students will also be required to take elective courses in subjects including database security, network security, IoT security and cloud security, among others. You can learn more about the "Design for Security" program by clicking here and in the video below: