Cybersecurity

Students will explore current cybersecurity challenges. They will develop and understand how defensive and offensive techniques can be used to improve resilience to an attack or breach. Students will explore various threat modelling techniques to understand a system’s weak points, and understand how solutions that bring together technology, people and policies can be used to improve defences.

By the end of this module the student should be able to:

1. To determine the challenges to cyberspace.
2. To critically evaluate vulnerabilities, threats to cyberspace, and developing solutions and countermeasures.
3. To develop solutions and processes - involving both technology and human factors to develop and continually improve cybersecurity.

1 Security of Cyberspace

a. What is cyberspace? b. What is cybersecurity? c. What are examples of cybersecurity? What do we mean by the 'security of cyberspace'? d. How does this affect each of us individually? e. Why is cybersecurity much more than simply technology and computers? Why does this matter?

2 Threat modelling

a. What are the vulnerabilities? b. How to identify both the technical vulnerabilities and broader systemic and social vulnerabilities. c. What are the vulnerabilities that may be specific to one's own organisation (e.g. a bank is likely to face different threat actors to, say, a university). d. How to develop policy, legal and social solutions.

3 Developing solutions

How can we use a holistic understanding of the cyber threat landscape to enhance our overall cybersecurity?

4 Application to Domains

Conclusions and Summary of the Course This final section will summarize the course and allow the students to analyse how the course might apply to their circumstances directly.