Curious about studying Cyber Security with a Foundation Year - BSc (Hons)at Birmingham City University? We've gathered all the key details—entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Hear from real students by checking out reviews, or take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BSc (Hons)
City Centre Campus (The Curzon Building)
Full Time
Sep 2027
4 Year
The Foundation Year course option enables you to study for our BSc (Hons) degree over an extended full-time duration of four years by including a Foundation Certificate (year one of four). The Foundation Certificate provides a broad study programme that underpins the follow-on degree. In order to progress to the next year of your degree, it is necessary to achieve a pass in all of the modules of the Foundation Certificate.. The BSc Cyber Security course is designed to equip you with state-of-the-art technical knowledge, intellectual know-how, management capabilities and practical skills that will enable you to succeed in meeting the cyber security challenges facing modern organisations. In the 21st century, data has become a necessary commodity, which has value in isolation and more so when viewed as a larger data set for trends and habits. Data is key to the functioning of modern business and the protection of this data is key to the ongoing success of the digital economy. As systems, such as IoT, both generate and consume data grow in capability and complexity, the need to protect the data created, stored and transited across public and private networks intensifies. Due to this, the need for suitably qualified cyber security practitioners has never been greater. This course will provide you with the knowledge and skills needed by the employers. Our strong links with industry enable us to teach the most demanding and up-to-date topics. You will learn state of the art technical knowledge, intellectual know-how, management capabilities and hands-on practical skills to succeed in meeting the cyber security challenges faced by modern organisations. This course is supported by a vibrant research environment within the department of Networks and Cyber Security and by traditionally strong industrial links with CISCO, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, UK Fast, Linux Professional Institute and BT.
Foundation YearThe foundation year is designed to give you the opportunity to develop your academic and interpersonal skills while developing your subject knowledge further to support you to success on your academic path. By studying a foundation year, your first year will be spent learning a wide range of broad subject areas which then open up opportunities for you to specialise further in your next year – which would be the first year of a full degree programme.
The Foundation Mathematics module provides the basic knowledge and mathematical skills which will equip the students to continue their studies to an undergraduate programme. The module will be focused on mathematics related to the field of computing. The interactive taught sessions will use fundamental mathematical in discussions to broaden understanding of the theory and practice introduced in the module. Additional support materials will be made available on the module Moodle website.
This module will provide you with an understanding of the role of digital technologies in transforming industries and sectors. It will provide you with a comprehensive introduction to core concepts of science for digital technology, and an understanding of the fundamental aspects of science essential for studying and working with digital technologies. You will learn systems thinking methodologies to model systems supported by digital technologies, enabling you to understand different aspects of technology, and to design your own solutions. Moreover, this module will help you to develop essential academic and personal study skills necessary for success in higher education. It will provide you with basic research, academic writing, and reflection skills. These skills are vital for your transition to higher education and will enhance your learning and academic growth.
The purpose of this module is to introduce students to the role of cyber security within modern society and everyday life. Students will explore how digital technologies influence individuals, organisations, and communities, and how cyber risks emerge within this connected environment. The module focuses on foundational online safety practices, privacy awareness, and responsible digital behaviour. Students will examine real-world cyber incidents and consider how cyber security impacts social, ethical, and economic contexts.
This module, focused on emerging technologies, will provide you with an understanding of the latest advancements and trends in Computing and their applications. Through discussions, practical examples, and hands-on activities, you will gain knowledge and insights into how emerging technologies are shaping the digital landscape and the world.
During the journey within higher education, developing your independent study is an essential skill to support shaping the knowledge to become more useful and applied within practice. This module aims to provide you with necessary skills and tips that should support you to work independently within your discipline and to successfully apply project management tools and techniques to a mini project related to your subject discipline. Within the module, various tutorials will encourage the elements or creativity, innovation and thinking. The skills developed from this module acts as a foundation both towards subjects within your discipline, and more importantly, your final year’s project in Level 6. This module will be supported with 2hrs of extra module support session.
Foundations of programming aims to provide you with the fundamental principles and practice-based activities needed to begin developing software programs. The module details the anatomy of a structured software program that includes the creation of a program algorithm, a logical, simple and organised program flow and the generation of pseudo and programming code. The module uses a combination of theory and practice-based sessions designed to engage students in group and individual activities to identify the components of a software program and to apply their knowledge into hands-on software programming activities. During the module sessions you will acquire the basic skills to design and create software programs.
Within the Computer Systems Module, you will gain knowledge and experience of computers and computer hardware. This module presents a holistic view of how computer systems work and it also provides the underpinning knowledge required: for the design of computer architecture to show how software interacts with hardware to apply electronics principles to use number systems for computer technology
The module introduces the fundamental elements of cybersecurity and its body of knowledge. It aims to develop a firm grounding in the underpinning knowledge and skills required to protect organisations from cyber-attack. You will be introduced to cybersecurity principles and implications of threats, vulnerability and risks facing these organisations.
In this module, you learn how modern operating systems are the glue that bind computer hardware and networks together and how they manage the user experience for individual computers and wider networks. We will focus on the function and purpose of operating systems, with a focus on hands-on practical skills. We will build on learning from your networking, programming and computer systems modules, enhancing and extending skills in all these areas. You will make heavy use of Open Source Software, demonstrating what can be achieved with this huge publicly shareable resource on a very limited budget.
Within the module of Computer Programming you will learn the key skills of Programming and how this relates to technology and communications. Programming is an engineering tool that plays a vital role to drive most of the modern technologies surrounding us, including the technological devices for communication, transportation and entertainment. In other words, it can be said that our modern lifestyles are heavily dependent on programming. Moreover, businesses increasingly rely on computers and the software run on them. Programming skills and a broader and deeper understanding of programming are therefore becoming increasingly important to the jobs market.
The module gives you the opportunity to learn mathematical concepts and methods and critically reflect on how they relate to computing and communication systems. You will develop core mathematical and statistical skills which are fundamental in computing and technical work in general. You will be expected to solve mathematical and statistical problems on paper and on a computer
The module provides the opportunity to learn and critically reflect the skills required in building and designing basic networks and their requirements within a network infrastructure. This module builds on the underpinning knowledge and theory of networking systems.
Software is ubiquitous. Not only is it deployed on traditional computing platforms (such as workstations and servers), but it is also embedded in network equipment (such as routers and firewalls) and consumer devices (such as hearing aids and smartphones). In this module, we will explore the foundations of software security, important software vulnerabilities and attacks that exploit them -- such as buffer overflows, SQL injection, and session hijacking. The module explores defenses that prevent or mitigate these attacks, including advanced testing and analysis techniques. You will also learn how product vendors and services should manage exposed vulnerabilities and how vulnerabilities are being disclosed to stakeholders in an ethical way. It continues the software theme that you began at Level 4 when you studied the Computer Programming and Applied Operating Systems module.
The module has been designed to provide you with the necessary theoretical framework, foundations and practical support for understanding security solutions with reference to the application of cryptography, access control and a wider range of security attack categories and defensive approaches and systems.
This module begins with an introduction to the core principles and processes of a typical computer forensic investigation. It aims to develop a firm grounding in the underpinning knowledge and skills required to analyse and evaluate the authenticity of data from a computer and related data storage devices in a forensically sound manner. The module will teach you the fundamental data structures applicable to computer forensics and how various software tools can be employed to analyse these structures in a variety of case types.
The module provides you with an opportunity to build on the learning and to develop knowledge of cyber security and how it relates to information and network security. This module builds on Hardware and Security Fundamentals module and will allow you to protect a network system from issues of cyber-crime, based on security principles and the principles of how to defend networks from attack
In this module you will have the opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills required for Network Technologies. This module builds your knowledge and underpinning theory for the networking modules and you will review the requirements from a small to medium scale network deployment engineering context.
This module covers key areas of cryptography, including symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms, public key infrastructure (PKI), digital signature, digital certificates, key exchange and management. In addition, the module will cover the application of cryptographic techniques to address security requirements such as confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and non-repudiation. You will use various block cipher-based cryptographic algorithms such as Advance Encryption Algorithm (AES), RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and secure hash functions.
The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and research-informed project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. In agreement with your supervisor, you will decide upon your topic which will take the form of a practical outcome (artefact) with accompanying contextual material. The main consideration when choosing your topic is that it must be aligned to the programme you are studying, and you should consider the relevance of this topic to your future academic or professional development.
The module provides you with an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of Ethical Hacking and information security within a global context. This module builds on the knowledge and underpinning theory from the networking modules and reviews the requirements for a secure network communication system.
As cyberattacks grow in volume and complexity, artificial intelligence (AI) is a vital tool assisting security operations analysts to stay ahead of threats. Looking after threat intelligence from millions of research papers, blogs and news stories, AI technologies like machine learning provide rapid insights to cut through the noise of daily alerts, drastically reducing response times. AI is a powerful tool for identifying vulnerabilities, threats, and attacks in cyberspace. AI-based cybersecurity can detect and analyse enormous amounts of data, seeking malicious patterns and providing necessary recommendations.
This module provides students with knowledge and practical skills essential for the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of evidence obtained from wired and wireless networked computers and storage systems. Emphasis is also placed on the evidence harboured by network hardware devices, such as routers and switches. You will learn how to effectively retrieve valuable information from the Microsoft Windows Server operating systems and analyse the Active Directory for evidence pertaining to user policies, privileges and violations. You will also learn how to formulate and implement a strategy to acquire drive images as evidence files over networked computers.
One of the major objective of the computer science program is to introduce the theory, principles and technologies underlying the construction of modern computing systems. This module introduces, Cloud Computing which is the technology that enables on-demand computing resources (everything from applications to data centres) over the internet.
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