Foundations of Cyber Security

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Key factors in cyber security from different disciplinary views including computer science, management, law, criminology, and social sciences
• The cyber threat landscape, both in terms of recent emergent issues and those issues which recur over time
• Managing security incidents, including digital forensic principles
• The roles and influences of governments, commercial and other organisations, citizens and criminals in cyber security affairs
• The importance of taking a multi-disciplinary approach to cyber security
• Issues surrounding privacy, anonymity and pervasive passive monitoring
• General principles and strategies that can be applied to systems to make them more robust to attack

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Analyse case studies, to reinforce the different disciplinary perspectives of cyber security

The syllabus includes the following topics:

The cyber security threat landscape; history and evolution

• Security surfaces; intelligence, case studies, trend analysis
• Actors in cyber security; governments, organisations, citizens, criminals
• The multidisciplinary nature of cyber security
• ISPs as intermediaries; DPI

Cryptography; Privacy; Anonymity

• Principles of secure communications; digital signatures, PKI, encryption, hashing
• Foundations cryptography; crypto-primitives and ciphers
• Privacy and anonymity protocols
• Crowds, onion routing, ToR
• Data management - anonymisation and de-anonymisation

Access control; authentication techniques

• Passwords and password analysis
• Security assurance and evaluation
• Introduction to biometrics

Offensive cyber-attacks; cyber war; hacktivism

• Advanced Persistent Threats
• Critical infrastructures
• Social engineering; phishing
• Security aspects of social networks, the web science perspective

Management of cyber risks

• Multilevel security; security policies
• Security economics; investment, cost of breach
• Cyber law, regulating the online environment
• Computer access offences, data protection law

Lecture - 36 hours per semester

Seminar - 8 hours per semester

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.