A month in Malta

Wow, time has passed so quickly here in Malta. Just realized I have completed my first month.

I met with the Mr. Frank Edwards, Principal of MCAST, last week and we had a very productive talk on the role of IT in the Malta economy and on some ideas on how I can contribute.

Nimfa and I have been invited to a dinner party on Saturday by Mike and Maria Rosner at their home in Mdina. Mike is the head of the CS/AI department at the University of Malta. We tremendously enjoyed the party and met new Maltese friends! The food was excellent and the wine was great! We stayed late until half past midnight and since public transport cease to operate after 11pm, Mike graciously drove us home.

We went to Marsaxlokk, a fishing village, last Sunday and found a huge market of clothes, shoes, vegetables, and all sorts of fish! We did get some fresh fish and brought them home. We made sure that they would not smell too bad while we were in a bus going home--several plastic bags did the trick! We found the fish that Battalia cooked in one of his shows on the Food network and prepared it the same way he had it done(if my memory serves me right :-)). Truly, it is one of the best fish dinner I had eaten in my life!

The lectures are progressing very well and I find the students very enthusiastic and eager to learn.

The Carnival Ta Malta, where kids dress up in costumes, was celebrated last week. It was sort of a combined mini-Mardi Gras and Halloween. They had giant floats and long parades in Valletta. Unfortunately, we did not manage to take pictures of the festivities! However, we got pictures of the catacombs at Rabat and the cathedral at Mdina. I'll publish them next time.

Applied Practical Training lectures

I conducted my first lectures today. I have two APT classes: Automated System Intrusion Discovery and Visualization of Log Files. The first class has 5 students (2 French and 3 Maltese students). The second has 3 students (all Malteses). Seems like all of them are very serious students. This is their 3rd year (2nd semester) and all of them have to take 2 individual APTS + 1 group APT this semester. They do not have any regular classroom work the entire semester! I seriously think that this is a very good setup for our students, i.e. exposing them to real and applied training. At the end of the semester, each one have to present his/her two APTs before a committee and the group APT as well. I have seen the previous reports that they have submitted for an APT and those reports look very impressive.

I have compiled my lecture notes/projects and made them available through this website : http://mcis.jsu.edu/faculty/gfrancia/MaltaLectureAPT/.

I purposely posted these so our students at JSU may have a notion of what students here in Malta do.

Faculty Development Lecture Series

It's all set! Here is a list of the scheduled lectures:

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Lecture 1: Integrating Information Security into the CS/IT Curriculum

Intended Audience: General

Synopsis: The presentation is an overview of the integration of Information Security into a CS/IT curriculum. The need for such effort will be established and a proposed project to vertically integrate information security into a CS/IT curriculum will be discussed. Jacksonville Sate University’s security capstone courses, their implementations, resources, and projects will also be covered.

Lecture 2: Introduction to Information Security

Intended Audience: General

Synopsis: The presentation is a high level treatment of information security. It covers the three basic security issues: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Also included are topics on protocols, policies, different types of attacks, and the available technologies to thwart those attacks.

Lecture 3: Layered Perspective of Network Security: Physical to Network Layers

Intended Audience: Hardware and Network Personnel

Synopsis: This is the first of the three part series on attacking and defending the network protocol stack. It covers different methods of attack and the tools used to carry out those attacks on the three lowest layers of the OSI protocol stack. The presentation also covers protection and detection schemes that can be implemented to prevent or minimize the damage associated with such attacks.

Lecture 4: Java Visualization

Intended Audience: Software Developers

Synopsis: This lecture will cover the Java 2D visualization API found in JFreeChart. The audience will be given a hands-on tutorial on Netbeans GUI programming and on creating visual charts for various data collected from security logs and system performance logs.

Lecture 5: Layered Perspective of Network Security: Transport to Presentation Layers

Intended Audience: Hardware and Network Personnel

Synopsis: This is the second of the three part series on attacking and defending the network protocol stack. This lecture covers the methods of attacking and defending the middle OSI protocol stacks: transport, session, and presentation layers. Attack and defense tools will also be described.

Lecture 6: Java and .Net Framework Cryptography

Intended Audience: Software Developers

Synopsis: This lecture presents basic encryption and hash digest techniques. Applied cryptography will be demonstrated using actual implementations that utilize cryptographic APIs in Java and C# frameworks.

Lecture 7: Layered Perspective of Network Security: Application and People Layers

Intended Audience: Hardware and Network Personnel

Synopsis: This is the last of the three part series on attacking and defending the network protocol stack. It covers the attacks and the defenses on the topmost layer OSI layer. The most critical and vulnerable component of IT, the user, will also be closely examined.

Lecture 8: Digital Forensics

Intended Audience: General

Synopsis: This lecture presents the identification, acquisition, preservation, and analysis of digital information. It also examines the various tools used in digital forensics and the formal digital forensic reporting guidelines.

Lecture 9: Access Control

Intended Audience: General

Synopsis: This presentation examines the two major components of access control: authorization and authentication. Also covers various security models and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS).

Getting more work done...

I have been here for almost 3 weeks and have not lectured yet. My first lecture will be on Tuesday, Feb 13! Seems like my materials are getting longer everyday. I think if I stop reviewing them , I'll stop adding stuff to them. Can't wait until I get to deliver my first.

It is Friday afternoon at 3:30 pm here at the College and guess? It seems like nobody is quite ready to declare that the weekend has started. Looks like they are going to work until 5pm just like any normal weekday. At 1pm on a Friday, Ayers Hall is like a deserted house--could barely find someone moving!

I finally realized how fortunate we are at the MCIS department. Instructors here at the College have to sign in and out. They have to work 40 hours a week and their actual weekly classroom teaching hours can be as high as 24! Their graded materials have to be cross-checked by other instructors and a QA representative from UK. Everything is documented on paper and signed. The University instructor's condition is much better but not even close to what we enjoy at JSU. Bottom line--let's count our blessings!

The Holy Week (first week of April--Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday) is an important week for Malta. The schools are closed for that week including the week after. Am I glad about that two week off in April? Here is what I did. As soon as I learned about the break, Nimfa and I made our travel plans to visit Athens, Greece. We made sure that we'll be back in time to observe their Good Friday, Black Saturday, and Easter Sunday celebrations.

Weather and other stuff

The weather is crazy out here. We get mid-50s in the afternoon and mid 30s at night. Houses do not have central heating systems so we have to bundle ourselves at night. Our apartment is provided with a portable electric heater, so we are fine. It is hard to get up in the morning, though. I'll show you pictures of our flat next time.

I walk a few hundred feet to my office at U of Malta every Tuesdays and Thursdays; sort of a walk from Ayers to Martin Hall. On Wednesdays and Fridays, I ride with the associate director at Malta College; roughly about 3.5 miles (20 minute drive). You won't believe it, but Malta also suffers from the pains of rush-hour traffic!

I will start delivering my faculty development workshop lecture series next week at U of Malta and Malta College. Meantime, I continue to work on preparing more presentation slides.

On a very bright side, we get to enjoy the finest wine of Malta and Italy at some unbelievable costs. Malta wine cost between $1.50 to $3.00 (0.50 to 0.99 Maltese Lira) a bottle. Excellent Italian wine cost between $3.00 to $4.50 a bottle. Everywhere we go, rabbit is served; we are not that brave yet to try one. However, last week we enjoyed a fine garlic octopus and fish dinner with wine for just $21.

Malta Pictures

Here are the pictures that you have been waiting for!

Can you tell why I took a picture of this announcement?

Finalized my schedule

I finally came up with a schedule that suits everybody. Monday is a flex day for me, i.e. getting lecture materials ready, attending to un-anticipated personal or official matters, or working with University of Malta (UoM) or Malta College of Arts, Sciences, and Technology (MCAST) if needed. I will be at UoM Tuesday and Thursday to supervise Applied Practical Trainings (APTs) and provide a lecture series on Computer Security. Wednesday and Friday are my MCAST days. My work at MCAST will be conducting a faculty development workshop and curriculum development.

I found both Mr. Rosner, head of the CS/AI department at UoM and Mr. Manduca, Director of the Institute of IT and Communications at MCAST very professional and accomodating. I am quite confident that we can make this Fulbright scholarship project a very productive undertaking that would greatly benefit a lot of people.