Course summary

Digital technologies drive economic growth yet create new cyber risks requiring ever more sophisticated solutions. There is worldwide demand for new and innovative approaches to tackle global cyber-threats specific to large-scale infrastructures, from energy production to finance through to healthcare and smart transportation. The cyber security of such infrastructures is paramount - their disruption can have large-scale impacts on society as well as massive business losses. There is a major shortage of cyber security professionals globally, and the specialist nature of critical infrastructures makes the problem even more acute. A strong ethos of rigorous experimental and empirical cyber security research underpins the MSc, facilitated by a state-of-the-art testbed for studying critical national infrastructure (CNI) and Internet of Things (IoT) security, and bespoke teaching equipment. You'll learn to apply foundational cyber security techniques to infrastructure and will develop the skills for engineering scalable solutions. You'll be exposed to real-world problems that are practical and challenge-oriented, but underpinned by rigorous research. This MSc aims to:

• Enable a deep understanding of fundamental concepts, design principles, building blocks and methods to understand and mitigate against cyber security threats;

• Give you hands-on experience of working with devices, systems and networks utilised in realistic infrastructure environments;

• Equip you with the ability to apply security principles and technical knowledge to analyse complex real-world infrastructures systems (including software systems, networks, control systems and IoT) to identify potential security issues and solutions;

• Provide you with the skills to reason critically about complex problems that require evaluation and analysis from a multi-dimensional perspective including technical, human and organisational aspects.