Advanced Cybersecurity (with optional Placement/Project year) MSc

An essential skill for postgraduate students is the ability to investigate topics with the objective of identifying facts , theories, ideas, methodologies, etc., that could inform the development of new insight for further research.  A major aspect of this is critical analysis of information. The module aims to develop critical reasoning in students and an understanding of other researchers’ work.  Students will learn how to use current research literature and relevant sources to gain new insight for a new research.  They will learn how to support their research report with relevant facts, theories, ideas, etc.  They will develop their ability to understand approaches and methodologies adopted in existing research toward writing a literature review and handling full research projects in their subject area.

The learning content also includes:

• Time management, library skills and literature search
• Evaluation of information sources
• Ethical issues in science, technology and engineering research (including intellectual property and plagiarism)
• Writing for research: styles and rules for presentation (including referencing standards)
• Choosing a research area and evaluating source material
• Hypothesis formation
• Design and application of questionnaires & interviews
• Quantitative and statistical tools for researchers (e.g. R, Python, SPSS)

The main weakness in systems is often the software they run, including software on devices and networked systems. This module provides learning to students on how to understand, and practice the state-of-the-art technique for gaining entry, i.e. 'exploitation', of software across a variety of systems and platforms.  With this understanding, the student will in parallel study and understand various counter-measures employed in system software against these attacks, the limitations of both the attacks and counter-measures, and counter-counter-measures.  Understanding this cycle will give the student an appreciation of the exploitable vulnerabilities and the need for and way to architect and design a secure system.

Furthermore, the student will gain an understanding of and experience in a number of tools and techniques in order to perform vulnerability and penetration tests on new software.  The module content includes:

• Software attack techniques, approaches, and methodologies.
• Exposure to exploitation techniques, including for example, buffer overflow, stack overflow, heap attacks, and UAF (Use After Free), amongst others.
• Attack methods including system, host, network, and web-based attacks.
• Tools and techniques; use of existing tools and development of new tools.
• Software Protection Methods and principles of secure software and system design.

This module provides an in-depth exploration of penetration testing, active defence, digital forensics, and incident response to provide a comprehensive approach to organizational security. Students will explore the methodologies attackers use to exploit systems and the tools and techniques which ethical hackers/penetration testers use to identify threats, the module also seeks to investigate and respond to security incidents. Emphasizing practical skills, this module covers penetration testing, active defence strategies, anti- and counter-forensics, malware analysis, and cyber threat intelligence. Through the coverage of these key concepts, the module enables students to understand key security vulnerabilities, allows threats to be thoroughly understood and enables students to recognise key security challenges enabling them to propose and design secure systems to respond to cyber threats.

The module is about Information Security Management and it will develop the student's understanding of the implications of cybersecurity to today's businesses, how businesses can gain market advantage by leveraging simple and yet robust cybersecurity principles, and the government's cybersecurity strategy for businesses in the UK. As the Cybersecurity programme is designed with conversion students in mind, this module will prepare students with useful cyber skills to lead or easily be part of cybersecurity efforts in their organisations.  The learning content will include:

• Core security standards (e.g., ISO27001, ISO27032), policies and governance etc.
• Information Risk Management and Business Continuity Management
• Audit, Assurance and Review
• Understanding the threats and risks businesses face today. Illustrative part of how this (or what) might be covered include:
  • Through problem based learning and possible industry collaboration
  • Exploring Social Engineering, the Least Resistance Path, Incident Response, Defence Indepth etc.
• Government strategy on Cybersecurity

The databases and security module involves the development of databases and their querying through the use of SQL. Databases will be discussed both theoretically and in practice. Students will have opportunies to develop and practice database creation and development. Database security will be discussed and shown how to apply in practice.

This module investigates different types of machine learning algorithms to find patterns in data. Each algorithm will be discussed in theory and practice, discussing: its data pre-processing requirements, pseudo-code, and evaluation metrics, e.g., Dunn index for clustering. Detailed demonstrations will show how to apply these algorithms to data using specified libraries in Python. Students will be required to investigate the merits of each algorithm for various types of data in both theory and practice.

This module facilitates the study of biological processes and their ability to produce adaptive, dynamic solutions to complex problems. The focus is on naturally occurring systems capable of producing emergent phenomena based on simple rules of interaction between entities and their environment. Techniques such as evolutionary computing, swarm intelligence, cellular automata and neural networks are viewed as digital realisations of these natural processes. The related topics of iterated functions, chaos, complexity and fractals are introduced to motivate the application of such techniques in the computing discipline.

The Research Project is the pinnacle of a taught, academic programme of master’s level study. It is a demonstration of academic, subject-specific, and research capabilities. Projects are a significant and substantial piece of individual work that draw upon the knowledge, technical abilities, and problem-solving skills developed in earlier modules. Students need to apply high-level research skills to a defined, complex problem. A distinguishing feature of the research project is that it is largely self-directed and independent, with support from an academic supervisor.