MSc Cyber Security & Human Factors

at Bournemouth University

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Individual Master’s Project: An opportunity to critically investigate and report on a particular issue in depth.

Option units (choose one each semester)

Choose one option unit in semester 1:
 

• 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 that these fall into.

• Blockchain & Digital Futures: This unit defines Blockchain technology, its business aspect, issues, objectives, and challenges, covering Blockchain horizontal and vertical scaling, key basics of cryptography required for understanding the Blockchain technology concepts, different cryptocurrencies, and their issues, challenges, and networks.

Choose one option unit in semester 2:
 

• 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.

• Accessibility & Assistive Technologies: This unit is an introduction to the concepts of accessibility and assistive technology and explores how technology can be used to support people with temporary, situational or lifelong disabilities by helping to overcome challenges to their self-care, educational, vocational and recreational independence.

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.

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. 

General entry requirements:

The normal requirements for embarking upon this course are:
 

• A Bachelors Honours degree with 2:2 any subject.

International entry requirements

Please see below some examples of the qualifications for entry:
 

• India: Bachelor’s degree (4 years) from a recognised HE institution with a minimum overall result of 55%

• China:  学士学位 (Bachelor degree) with a minimum of 65% overall

• Nigeria:  Bachelor's degree from a recognised institution in Nigeria with a minimum classification of 2:2

• Thailand:  Thai Bachelor's (Honours) degree from a recognised higher education institution.

• Vietnam:  Bachelor's degree/Bang tot nghiep dai hoc with an average score of at least 7.0, or a Master’s degree/Thac si.

• Turkey: Bachelor’s Degree (Lisans Diplomasi -four years) to be considered for a postgraduate course at BU.

All applications will be subject to a minimum grade and your degree may need to be in a relevant subject area.

English language requirements

If English is not your first language, you will need to provide evidence that you understand English to a satisfactory level. English language requirements for this course are normally:
 

• IELTS (Academic) 6.0 with minimum 5.5 in each component, or equivalent.

Annual tuition fees:
 

• £8,750 (UK, ROI & CI)

• £14,750 (Int'l)

As an MSc Cyber Security & Human Factors graduate, you will be prepared to work across the areas of cyber security, online behaviours and academic research, undertaking roles such as:
 

• Cyber Psychologist

• Security Designer

• Digital Forensic Investigator

• Incident Manager

• Intrusion Detector.