Informatics

INF 124X
Spring 2020
Module Assignment Seven (MA7)
Background:
The best way to think about this as if it was a single question from a midterm or final
examination. It is meant to assess your overall knowledge of the Module topic. But, the target
amount of time for you to do this is 20 minutes or less (although the assignment is not timed).
I’m not expecting (or wanting) you to take hours on this. A good, short answer (maybe about
the equivalent of a quarter to a half page) that took you 20 minutes or less, but that answers
the question is what I have in mind.
The rules:
• Open Book, Open notes,
• You may use the internet to look up information or otherwise do research for your
answer.
• If you use an outside source (the text, some other source), you must document it. I
don’t particularly care about what reference format you use, but you must reference
the sources you use in your answer. If you do not, you will lose points.
• You may not seek out others (e.g. friends, fellow students, tutors, online question
answering services or forums) for assistance in this assignment. It is meant to be your
own work. All UAlbany Academic Integrity policies apply here.
• The assignment will be available at the beginning (12:00 AM) at the beginning of the day
Saturday, May 2, 2020 and is due submitted online by the end of the day (11:59:59 PM)
on Tuesday, May 5, 2020. Answers must be submitted via Blackboard (e.g. emailed
answers are not admissible). You will want to avoid waiting until the last minute to
submit in case Blackboard is slow, crashes, your wireless gets slow or goes down, etc.,
etc.
• Late Penalties apply (cf. the syllabus).
The Question:
One of the themes in this module is how artificial intelligence/machine learning can contribute
(or not) to cybersecurity. Suppose we decided to set up a machine learning system as a firewall
to protect a network. What would we have to address? Specifically
• What would our machine learning system do?
• What would we want it to learn?
• What data would we need to have in order to train it?
• Are there any other things we need to take into account as we attempt this project?
Attachment:
The attachment contains this same information in PDF form.