College offers midwest’s first IT security lead assessor course

The Current, Summer 2003

During the week of March 3, the College of Business Administration and the British Standards Institution (BSI) offered UDM graduate students the unique opportunity to become certified professional practitioners in the only global standard for IT security, ISO 17799.

Coordinated by CIS professors Dan Shoemaker and Antonio Drommi, the College invited Alan Reed, who was part of the BSI group that originally wrote the standard, from London, UK to deliver this course. Students gave up their traditional spring break to take advantage of the weeklong intensive format.

The students who successfully completed the tough licensing examination given at the end of this course were granted the Certified Lead Assessor credential from BSI. This internationally-recognized certificate allows them to professionally assure and certify the security of corporate information assets. Although this new certification is a crucial part of the worldwide strategy to secure cyberspace, it is so rare in the United States that the UDM course more than doubled the number of certified Lead Assessors in this country.