Executive leadership in information security assurance (ISA) is essential for the nation’s prosperity and security. Government and industry executives must take the lead in ensuring that a culture of information security assurance as an enabler of efficient and dependable operation pervades their organizations and the society as a whole. This is particularly vital for modern cyber-integrated infrastructure systems such as transportation, power, telecommunications and healthcare. Executives must become the driving force behind local, national, and international cooperation to protect the global information infrastructure and reduce cyberspace vulnerabilities. This requires that current and future executives have a thorough under-standing of ISA, its merit, and its social and economic impacts.

Virginia Tech offers an executive Master of Information Security Assurance (eMISA) program, which uniquely and comprehensively focuses on assuring cyber-integrated infrastructure systems. The eMISA program is designed for participants to comprehend the concepts underlying ISA, apply those concepts to design assured information systems, and critically analyze and evaluate information systems’ conformance to their requirements in the realm of infrastructure systems operation. The goal of the eMISA program is to develop awareness and expertise for tomorrow’s information security professionals through appropriate courses that enable them to integrate ISA engineering, technology, management, policy, and practice into a coherent defense-in-depth plan to support enterprise operations. The eMISA program is also designed to comprehensively address the global dimension of ISA through multi-national collaboration in instruction and information sharing.

The eMISA program offers 30 alternate weekend-only sessions, which can be completed within 17 months. This includes foundation and in-depth coverage of ISA management, engineering, policy, and analysis, as well as a field study and a capstone project. The highlight of the field study course is a two-week intensive learning program located at one of Virginia Tech’s international collaborating organizations in Europe. In the final capstone project, participants synthesize the education and experience gained throughout the program to address real-world challenges. The program also includes extensive demonstration and hands-on experience in an ISA simulation and experimentation laboratory. The eMISA program targets the executive leadership instrumental to affecting the ISA controls required for effective organization-wide dependable operation. Precisely, the program is designed to maximize valuable interactions among participants through peer learning in a cohort-based program. A rigorous admissions process will select 25 participants for each cohort. In addition, it targets information assurance professionals who wish to pursue a graduate degree without interrupting their career.