Cyber Security & Digital Forensics with Professional Placement

Kingston University

This module takes you on a journey from the underlying computer architecture through to modern computing approaches and methodologies. We developed this module to enhance your understanding of how modern computer systems are designed and used to meet the needs of today's computing environments.

The highly technical Ethical Hacking module commences by introducing you to the fundamental steps and frameworks needed for the practical and ethical hacking exercises. In particular, the module introduces you to techniques and methods to identify vulnerabilities and potential threats in computer systems, networks, and applications using a variety of tools, such as Nessus, Burp Suite, Nmap and Metasploit Framework. You will be developing skills that help organisations to proactively identify and address security weaknesses before they can be exploited by malicious attackers.

This module is designed to encourage you to look outwards to industry and employability, and make you more confident when facing the job market upon graduation. You will develop excellent group working skills, broaden your understanding of industry and its requirements, and enhance your project management skills.

In this module you will learn to design and build full stack web applications. The first half of the module will be dedicated to relational databases which are crucial to any company or organisation, and form the back-end persistence layer of the vast majority of modern applications. You will learn the fundamental concepts and principles of database design before moving on to building the databases and writing queries to extract data from the database.

With a strong emphasis on understanding the Internet protocols, the Networking Concepts module will develop your understanding of the basic principles of networking. You will become familiar with current LAN and WAN technologies and their role in building domestic and corporate networks. This knowledge will underpin the skills required to design and simulate small company networks including identifying the physical components required and to design an appropriate IP addressing schemes for such network. It will also underpin your understanding of how network services such as mobile apps and network-based games are implemented.

This module is an essential course programme component for students on the sandwich route of an honours degree "with professional placement". It is a key element in providing an extended period in industry gaining real world employability skills. Students are supported both before and through their placement by the SEC Placement team. Students that successfully complete their placement year will graduate with a 4 year sandwich degree.

This is a core module in the Cyber Security and Computer Forensics field which explores the major challenges to computer security. It familiarises you with a range of cryptographic algorithms and protocols, firewall and access-control architectures and methods to assess and improve network and application security. This knowledge will allow you to implement and evaluate security controls and develop secure policies for corporate networks.

The goal of the module is to further develop skills in organisation, timekeeping, research literature, developing and critically analysing results as well as reporting work verbally and in a written format. The end result will be an artefact or artefacts which demonstrate creativity and technical competence as well as a technical report.

This module gives you a dedicated opportunity to develop your Future Skills Graduate Attributes. At the start of the module, you will be supported to self-assess your current skills profile. You will determine which attributes and skills you need to develop to support your career ambitions. In this process, you will be supported by a dedicated career coach, helping you explore a range of options that includes self-employment/freelancing, starting your own business, higher level study, and other professional graduate-level opportunities. Throughout the module, you will be given opportunities to engage with external mentors, to support reflection and to develop a professional network. You will undertake a tailored series of activities and projects, aligned to your goals, from a menu of development options. This could include short courses, enrichment activities and experiential learning options such as micro-placements. You will also be able to reflect on activities outside the University that develop your graduate attributes, such as work or volunteering.

In this module, students will learn cyber threat intelligence to design and deploy a Security Operations Centre (SOC). The first half of the module will be devoted to network inventory management and threat scanning, which are the very first steps to designing resilient IT systems. You will also learn risk analysis and management to minimise the impact of cyberattacks. Moreover, operating system hardening techniques following the regulators, government and industry standards will be studied, analysed and implemented in real network scenarios. Once you develop a basic skill in threat hunting, data analytics tools will be explored. You will use Splunk and ELK Stack to identify any unusual activities within the IT system boundary in real time. You will then develop skills in data backup plans in the most secure way. The incident response plan and recovery plan are very integral parts of cyber threat analysis. We will study recommendations by industries and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) UK and implement them in a simulated environment. The ultimate aim of this module is to prepare students as SOC Analysts for small, medium to big tech companies.

This module focuses on enterprise networks; the internet protocols and services which will develop the understanding of how the TCP/IP internet protocol suite achieves the interconnection of geographically separate computers over networks of arbitrary topology and technology. This knowledge will underpin the design skills required to design such company networks including identifying the physical components  required and designing appropriate IP addressing schemes. The module introduces wireless and high-speed networks and how these are used to deliver a variety of business applications.

This module will expand your skill set and your awareness as software industry professional, using industry-relevant tools, know-how, as well as theoretical areas. Our focus is on real-world experience, and preparing you to become a skilled graduate, regardless of the job roles you are considering or the skills you want to expand on within the computing domain.

Entrepreneurship is a major driving force in creating economic growth and this module illustrates how to work in an entrepreneurial fashion. At the heart of entrepreneurship is innovation, which can come in many forms. Sometimes this can be an incremental but generally gives significant improvement to the customer. Alternatively it is a new breakthrough or transformational innovation. Incremental innovation is aimed at increasing the value of a product or service, to add more value and thereby creating new and superior value chains. Breakthrough innovation often creates new categories of product, or transforms the historical ways of doing things. From this foundation, the module proceeds to explain how to develop a strategy, not only to satisfy the critical needs that organisations have, but also to explore the application and use of improved value chains using the concepts of corporate venturing (spin-out/intrapreneurship) and entrepreneurship (new venture creation).