Directors:
Dr. Golden G. Richard III
Dr. Vassil Roussev

Affiliated Faculty Members:
Dr. Jing Deng
Dr. Jaime Nino

The NSSAL is the center for all Information Assurance related instruction and research in the Department of Computer Science and is the University-designated Center for Information Assurance Education. Research and instructional equipment as well as office space for research assistants is available in the lab. In conjunction with the guidelines and best practices recommended by the National Information Assurance Training and Education Center, we aim to advance the understanding and practice of Information Assurance in the department. The University of New Orleans library has full subscriptions to the ACM and IEEE digital libraries, which make available a wide variety of papers and journals related to Information Assurance.

The Networking, Systems Administration, and Security Laboratory is open 24 hours a day and includes state-of-the-art equipment for research and instruction in a number of areas of information assurance. The lab contains an isolated gigabit network with high-performance switching, a dedicated file server with 2TB of disk storage, and isolated networks for investigation of malware. Areas of research and instruction in the NSSAL include:

• Computer Security and Digital Forensics: We are developing new approaches to gathering, sorting, and processing digital evidence. We are also pioneering the application of high-performance computing equipment, particularly commodity compute clusters and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in solving computer crime. A number of courses in digital forensics and computer security are offered in the NSSAL. Students in these courses are exposed to state-of-the-art investigative techniques using both commercial and open-source tools.
• Systems and Network Administration: NSSAL supports hands-on courses in systems administration and operating systems internals.
• Mobile Computing and Wireless Networking: Mobile Computing and Wireless Networking. Members of the lab are developing routing algorithms for ad hoc wireless networks, electronic tourism systems, and powerful tools for wireless LAN design. A dedicated wireless network, a variety of PDAs, and laptop computers are available in the NSSAL for instructional and research use.
• More details on active research in the NSSAL can be found here.

For more information on Information Assurance click here.