Spring 2027

Introduction to Information Security

Senior-level undergraduate course in information security covering cryptographic primitives, security protocols, system security, and emerging topics.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 7

Past student reviews · Rahul Chatterjee

A past student reported that Rahul Chatterjee’s course had two midterms and no final; the midterms were open notes and open laptop.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Explain the purpose of security and accurately define and apply key concepts, including threats, vulnerabilities, and trust.

  • Apply best practices for both operational and system design security.

  • Apply formal security properties provided by cryptographic techniques and illustrate them with relevant cryptographic algorithms.

  • Evaluate the three fundamental authentication mechanisms, evaluate their trade-offs, and determine appropriate use cases.

  • Define, implement, and enforce access control policies within networks and operating systems.

  • Analyze the security of network and web environments through the deployment technology and policy

  • Create threat and trust models, and apply appropriate security mechanisms to protect system integrity.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

COMP SCI 537 or graduate/professional standing or declared in the Capstone Certificate in Computer Sciences for Professionals

    • COMPSCI 537
    • graduate/professional standing
    • declared in the Capstone Certificate in Computer Sciences for Professionals
    take one
COMPSCI 642

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Any of
    • COMPSCI 537
    • graduate/professional standing
    • declared in the Capstone Certificate in Computer Sciences for Professionals

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

EARLENCE FERNANDES is recorded teaching in Spring 2020. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

RAHUL CHATTERJEE is recorded teaching in Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2023. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Earlence Fernandes

Earlence Fernandes gave a high-level overview of information security, and the homework assignments were fun and simple.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.41 GPA, 63.0% A/AB (n=54 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.64 GPA, 72.2% A/AB (n=54 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.51 GPA, 76.5% A/AB (n=34 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Rahul Chatterjee

A past student reported that Rahul Chatterjee’s course had two midterms and no final; the midterms were open notes and open laptop.

Past student reviews · Earlence Fernandes

A past student found Earlence Fernandes’s OS security unit the hardest, and over half the endterm covered it.

Topics

  • Cryptographic primitives
  • Security protocols
  • System security
  • Emerging topics

Skills

  • Applying best practices for operational and system design security
  • Evaluating authentication mechanisms and their trade-offs
  • Creating threat and trust models

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "1e7f2326ec607ec0c5a685200bbe42cdd032c6b15d69b9e45128b3b3aa39e8fa",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}