Software security for DevOps and continuous deployment in the cloud

http://www.devsecops.org/

Hi Munawar

Martin has certainly given you a good start with his suggestion. I would suggest since you are doing a Masters, and time is likely to be limited, you might like to consider such cloud areas as security, privacy, accountability, responsibility, standards compliance, big data and forensics. I have attached a list of papers for you to check out if there is something you might prefer. These are all challenging areas of cloud, none of which have been resolved yet. With more research to choose from, you might find it a bit easier to get the information you might need.

Regards

Bob

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Thanks martin and Bob, Can you also please mention that which programming skills(language, tools) will be needed ,and what are prerequisites for this?  

Hi Munawar

The programming skills you require will very much depend on what you plan to do.

For exapmle, you can do your dissertation based on a deep literature review to highlight gaps in the research, or you might want to consider the impact of some issue on business users, neither of which approaches would require particular programming skills. For these, I would recommend you use Mendeley for a referencing system. First, it is free, and you can save your pdf research papers inside the system, you can annotate them, and carry out searches on your whole collection, and of course can prepare a bibtex file in any one of several hundred different formats with ease. You can get a plug-in for Word or Libre Office Writer (also free), or you can simply use LaTeX {again free} for preparing your dissertation and any papers you want to publish.

On the other hand, you might want to develop a programme to address a particular issue you have identified. The skills you will need for this will depend on what exactly you want to do with your programme. For that, your best approach is to start with your own personal skills audit to find out which programmes you are comfortable with, and how skilled you are with each of them.

Remember, that you don't have to do programming for a CS Masters, you can do surveys. While programming skills can help you with whatever you tackle, you don't need to be an ace programmer. You have a limited time in which to carry out your work, so don't add the extra stress of learning new programming languages or tools. If you are not already expert in programming or the tools you might need to use, then choose to do something that will not involve programming. There is plenty to choose from.

You need to use your time well, and productively. So, focus on the skills you already have. Learning a new programming language properly takes a good deal of time, and time is what you don't have a lot of when you do a Masters. Focus on the core of what you want to do, and keep it simple.

Regards

Bob