Hi,

Might I suggest that you also "get your finger on the pulse" so to speak. Find CERT and CIAC, and subscribe to their e-mail security bulletins. Also subscribe to the AV alert bulletins by Symantec, NAI/McAfee, Panda, Kaspersky and so on. And even the Microsoft security alerts.

My message is that you need to balance academic reasearch with real life situations and case studies. All the stuff I have mentioned is free and updated regularly, so why not have some

Good luck