MSc Cyber Security and Human Factors

Provided by Bournemouth University

About the course

Cyberspace is a vast, complex and still evolving community that presents enterprise, industry and governments with on-going security management challenges, as it grows on an exponential scale.

Bournemouth University’s MSc in Cyber Security & Human Factors has been developed in response to the needs of the computing and security sectors worldwide. Graduates from this course will be equipped with technical know-how to protect and prevent, and the ability to assess risk and manage incidents.

On this course, you'll gain an understanding of cyber security by investigating threat, vulnerabilities and impact risk, the contagion of fear, uncertainty and doubt, managing human factors in security, trust management and information assurance.

Part-time students can take each unit separately as CPD, building up to a full Masters. 

We were participants in the Intensive Program on Information Communication Security (IPICS 2017) held in Greece in June 2017.

Key information

Next start date:

September 2018, January 2019

Location:

Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus

Duration:

September start: 12 months without placement or 24 months with a 12 month placement, January start: 18 months without placement or 30 months with a 12 month placement. 18-36 months part-time

Required subjects:

Computer science, Electronics, IT, Law, Psychology or Business

Entry requirements:

A Bachelors Honours degree with 2:2 in a required subject, or equivalent. If English is not your first language you'll need IELTS 6.0 (Academic) or above.

Course details

This course is delivered full-time and part-time.

Dates for the modules for the part-time option are given below and where relevant will be updated as soon as the new timetable is confirmed. Each unit can be taken separately as CPD with or without formal assessment. If you do elect to take the unit with assessment you can accrue academic credits towards a full Masters.

Core units

• Cyber Security: Develop skills and knowledge for cyber security. Material, lectures and seminars in this unit capture concepts of cyberspace ecosystems and the security of socio-technical systems. The unit also covers the life cycle of cyber security mechanisms, including the design, development, management and, most importantly, how they're sustained. Dates 17-20 Jan 2018

• Human Factors: Soft systems, human factors integration (HFI), training, trust, organisational learning, information and knowledge management will be examined through case study analysis. You'll also conduct situational awareness and workload measurements in trials, experiments and exercises, and apply user experience (UX) techniques to evaluate interactive systems. Dates 13-16 Sep 2017. Unit leader: Dr Huseyin Dogan

• Research Methods & Professional Issues: Research requires a structured and disciplined approach at all stages. We'll help you to develop key research skills in many areas from project proposals and planning to critical analysis of research findings, academic writing and dissemination. We'll also teach you about professional standards and ethical issues for research. Dates 16-19 May 2018. Unit leader: Dr Raian Ali

• Individual Masters Project: An opportunity to critically investigate and report on a particular issue in-depth.

Option units

Please note that option units require minimum numbers in order to run and may only be available on a semester by semester basis. They may also change from year to year.

You'll choose three of the following:

• Cyber Psychology: Explore the impact of the internet and social media applications on individuals, groups, organisations and society, and human factors relevant to cyber security and online behaviours. You'll learn to evaluate the principal features of human factors in current and planned online secure systems and identify means of promoting safer online behaviour. Dates 9-11 Nov 2017

• Enterprise Digital Forensics: As globalisation and the Internet have led to increasing integration, the opportunities for unauthorised exploitation have also grown. You'll develop competencies for constructing plans to capture and analyse data for an investigation of potentially abnormal activity.

• Information Assurance: Evaluate issues to improve assurance and risk management. You'll evaluate human factors relevant to information assurance plans, and understand the roles of accreditation, compliance and governance in information assurance. Dates 12-14 July 2018. Unit leader: Dr Christopher Richardson

• Security Event & Incident Management: Incident management capability means managing computer security events and incidents. Lectures and seminars in this unit will capture the concepts of event logging and collection. You'll learn to define policies, processes, procedures, roles and responsibilities and understand the issues of lead implementation of ISO 27001. Dates 15-17 Mar 2018

• Security by Design: Security must be addressed as early as possible when building a system or planning organisational change. However, security never seems to be a driving concern when engaging in innovation. When security is addressed, we discover how hard building security in really is. In this unit, you'll have an opportunity to build security into the design and specification of secure systems, and the broader socio-technical context these fall into. Dates tbc

Programme specification

Programme specifications provide definitive records of the University's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry. If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. Alternatively please contact us for assistance.