Online Master's in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance

Cybersecurity Management I - Strategic focuses on the strategic and long-term alignment of an organization's information security program to regulators and ensures that it is appropriate for the company culture and management organization. This course introduces the Basel Committee's four lines of defense model to appropriately implement separation of duties and information security roles and structures. Additionally, this course covers big-picture items (e.g., how risk management will be performed institutionally and how compliance to information security requirements will be managed). Finally, this course helps students apply strategic decision making as companies adapt to new technologies, processes, and people practices related to processing, managing, and protecting information resources.

Information Security and Assurance explores the many facets of the information security landscape. Recognizing that there are no universal solutions to issues related to information security and assurance, this course covers the durable security principles that help to drive sound decisions. Additionally, this course introduces well-accepted risk management principles that help to appropriately secure information assets. Finally, the course illustrates how a comprehensive library of policies, standards, and procedures are used to secure assets and provide the required levels of regulatory compliance. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Cybersecurity Architecture and Engineering prepares students to implement and manage security engineering tasks and processes using secure design principles grounded in positive security engineering. It covers the fundamental concepts of confidentiality and integrity security models along with applied cryptography for implementation of these models. Additionally, this course helps students assess and mitigate vulnerabilities found in security designs, architectures, and solutions. Finally, this course introduces techniques to design and implement physical security controls for data centers and other large implementations of IT. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Secure Network Design covers topics for designing and protecting computer networks. Course topics emphasize secure physical and logical network architecture design for both wired and wireless networks. Secure Network Design provides students the opportunity to recognize secure network characteristics, apply techniques to securely configure network devices, propose network segmentation strategies, perform root cause analysis, and recommend mitigation approaches based on industry best practices. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Cybersecurity Management II - Tactical provides students the opportunity to examine tactical cybersecurity management, which is the practice of addressing near-term cybersecurity goals within an enterprise. The tactical management process enables organizations to address unique cyber requirements throughout the organization. It deals with the people, processes, and technologies that are in use, and it primarily centers on the current operations of the enterprise. A range of cybersecurity tactical management topics are introduced in this course, including the tools, techniques, and concepts used to develop an effective cybersecurity program within organizations.

Secure Software Design focuses on the variety of elements needed to address and implement secure software acquisition and development throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). It covers the end-to-end principles and addresses people, technology (tools), and processes to design and develop consistently secure applications. Additionally, this course underscores the importance and value of the defense in depth principle across the entire SDLC. Finally, this course introduces techniques to adapt common security activities to modern software development practices, including Agile/Scrum and DevOps. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Ethical Hacking helps students build the skills necessary to protect an organization's information system from unauthorized access and system hacking. Topics include security threats, penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, risk mitigation, business-related issues, and countermeasures. Students will learn how to expose system vulnerabilities, find solutions for eliminating and preventing them, and apply hacking skills on different types of networks and platforms. This course prepares students for the following certification exam: EC-Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker exam. This course has no prerequisites.

Forensics and Network Intrusion builds proficiency in detecting hacking attacks and properly extracting evidence to report the crime and conduct audits to prevent future attacks. Topics include computer forensics in today’s world; media and operating system forensics; data and file forensics; audits and investigations; and device forensics. This course has no prerequisites.

The Master of Science in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance (MSCSIA) Capstone project allows students to demonstrate their capability to establish a durable cybersecurity and information assurance program. The capstone project challenges students to integrate skills and knowledge from all program domains into one project that deals with a significant real-world cybersecurity problem.