Technology Selection Paper
This assignment is Part 1 of a three-part Analysis of Alternatives evaluation exercise. Your final paper should incorporate feedback from your peers and will be submitted for grading via your assignment folder. Follow the instructions posted by your instructor regarding peer review and “best paper” voting.
For this paper, you will construct a recommendation to study and evaluate a specific technology. To support your recommendation you will use information from either your Technology Review #1 or Technology Review #2. By the time you are finished with your recommendation, you will have
performed all four stages of the technology scan.
GETTING STARTED
Choose one of your technology reviews (#1 or #2) and rewrite the paper to serve as a background paper for a decision briefing for senior executives. These executives will be meeting to decide which emerging technologies or emerging applications of technologies will become part of one or more security-focused Internal Research & Development projects during the next budget cycle.
Write down your thoughts and ideas about the security implications of this technology using (a) the Five Pillars of Information Assurance and/or (b) the Five Pillars of Information Security. For your paper, you do not need to include all ten “pillars” but you should address a minimum of three. If you are targeting an “A” on your paper, address at least five of the pillars.
Throughout your recommendation (see below), you must keep your focus upon the security posture of this technology and its applications (e.g. products or services built upon this technology or which
incorporate this technology).
Note: If you had deficiencies in your survey of the professional literature for your chosen technology,
you should correct that problem now. You may also add sources and, if necessary, remove inappropriate sources from your survey. Refer back to the original Detailed Project Description for your selected paper (TR1 or TR2).
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STUDY
This assignment builds upon the technology scan which you performed for your three technology review papers and incorporates the final stage: recommending. Your focus in this paper must be upon identifying and presenting information from authoritative sources which supports a recommendation to select this technology for further study as part of an Internal Research & Development project (IR&D).
Your recommendation should be based upon the following (at a minimum):
o characteristics (features and capabilities) of the technology
o interactions among the selected technology, people, environments, and processes (how
will it be used; use cases if known)
o risks or vulnerabilities associated with adoption of this technology
o costs and benefits associated with adoption of this technology
Addressing Costs and Benefits: Do not tell the reader how much the technology will cost. Discuss
instead how much it might cost to SECURE this technology against cyber-attacks and/or how difficult it will be to deny criminals and terrorists the use of this technology.
WRITING YOUR PAPER
Your paper must provide the reader with an overview of the technology followed by information about the potential security risks and/or benefits of its use (the security posture ).You MUST use information paraphrased from the papers found during your Survey of the Professional Literature (with appropriate in-text citations).
Revise the original paper then add the recommendation section.
Your Technology Selection Paper should be at least three pages in length but no more than five pages (excluding the title page and references page). This means that you may need to shorten your original paper (cut out material) so that you can incorporate the additional information required for this assignment.
GRADING
Grading Rubric: Consult the grading rubric for specific content and formatting requirements for this
assignment.
APA Format: See the resources posted under Content > Course Documents > APA Resources.
Additional Requirements: Your papers must comply with the formatting guidance provided by your
instructor. All papers in this course must also comply with APA Style for references and citations.
