Cybersecurity Operations (Combined BS + MS)

To properly secure any organization's information infrastructure and assets, a periodic assessment of its security posture at various levels of the organization is essential. One key area is the direct assessment of vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure, systems and applications, followed by targeting and exploitation of the same. This course covers the theoretical bases for cyber threats and vulnerabilities, and delves into selection and application of penetration testing methodologies ranging from reconnaissance to the exploitation of vulnerabilities by probing infrastructure, services and applications. The course places a strong emphasis on the use of these methodologies to demonstrate, document, report on, and provide a clear roadmap for remediation of exposed security issues.

Full course description for Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing

This course provides students with a thorough foundation of applied cryptography for cybersecurity practitioners. As encryption technologies continue to integrate into everyday culture, the importance of cryptography and encryption knowledge of cybersecurity practitioners continues to increase. Students will learn and be able to apply and analyze: the history of cryptography from the earliest ciphers to current encryption methodology, mathematical foundations for cryptography, symmetric and asymmetric algorithms, and applied cryptography pertaining to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), SSL/TLS, strategies for defense utilizing encryption and cryptography, military applications, steganography, cryptanalysis, and more. Additionally, students will look to the future of cryptography and encryption including a look into quantum cryptography and encryption in cloud environments. Overlap: ICS 483.

Full course description for Cryptography for Cybersecurity Practitioners

Understanding the Operating Systems (OS) theory and the OS security concepts is required to perform critical roles in the cybersecurity and cyber operations fields. This course exposes the students to topics of the OS theory with an emphasis on security applications. The course begins with an introduction of low-level programming, including Assembly and C. It continues with the basic Unix-like operating system Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) along with the fundamentals of OS concepts.

Full course description for Secure System Programming and OS Theory

Cyber operations encompass both offensive and defensive security strategies, requiring a deep understanding of network security, system vulnerabilities, and operational tactics. This course provides a comprehensive foundation in cyber operations, focusing on security principles, network architecture, protocol analysis, and strategic cyber engagements. Students will analyze fundamental cybersecurity principles and evaluate how failures in security design lead to system vulnerabilities that can be exploited in offensive cyber operations. The course covers network traffic analysis, TCP/IP protocols, and cyber operations phases, including planning, execution, authority considerations, and post-operation assessment. Students will design defensive network architectures with multi-layered security controls, ensuring mission security objectives are met. Additionally, the course examines the balance between usability and security, addressing human behavior risks that undermine system security…

Full course description for Cyber Operations Fundamentals

This course covers advanced topics of digital forensics procedures, legal issues, and scientific principles. The course addresses the current and new issues in digital forensics by offering various topics such as windows, smart phones, memory, network forensics, Macintosh forensics, and updated and expanded coverage on legal issues. Moreover, the students will learn how to report their findings to present them to the court using the state-of-the-art tools in digital forensics.

Full course description for Digital Forensics I

This course covers how to conduct successful digital forensic examinations in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, the methodologies used, key technical concepts, and the tools needed to perform examinations. The required technical details of how each operating system works and how to find artifacts is also covered. Topics like File systems, data recovery, memory forensics, executable layouts are discussed in details. Moreover, Hands-On Network Forensics that starts with the core concepts within network forensics, including coding, networking, forensics tools, and methodologies for forensic investigations are covered.

Full course description for Digital Forensics II

The ubiquitous nature of Internet of Everything (IoE) and the prevalence of computing technologies in critical infrastructure sectors have brought an unprecedented digital transformation to individuals, businesses, and industries. On the other hand, the IoE has also enabled the increased spread of malicious software (malware). Malware attacks are increasing exponentially over time with total number of known malware surpassed one billion. As a result, the ability to detect, analyze, understand, control, and eradicate malware derive threat intelligence, helps provide timely response to security incidents, fortify defenses, and is essential to nation¿s economic vitality and security. This course introduces malware analysis and reverse engineering techniques which will allow students to recognize, analyze and remediate infections. Using modern tools and procedures the student will understand how to dissect and reverse engineered a malware to understand its behavior, propagation,…

Full course description for Malware Analysis and Reverse Engineering

As the first course in a two-part capstone sequence, CYBR 498 provides students with the foundational framework to conceptualize, research, and plan a rigorous cybersecurity project. This course guides students through the identification and formulation of a well-defined research problem, leveraging current cybersecurity trends, industry challenges, and emerging threats. Students will conduct a comprehensive literature review, synthesizing insights from scholarly research, industry reports, and additional learning resources to support the development of a viable cybersecurity solution. Emphasis is placed on problem definition, scope of work, and research methodology, ensuring that students construct a strong theoretical and practical foundation for their capstone project. In addition to technical research, students will explore legal, ethical, and compliance considerations relevant to cybersecurity research and professional practice. To further enhance career readiness, students will…

Full course description for Cybersecurity Capstone I Concepts, Research and Planning

As the culminating experience of the undergraduate Cybersecurity program, CYBR 499 challenges students to apply their acquired knowledge, technical expertise, and industry best practices in developing a comprehensive security solution. This project-driven course requires students to integrate research, risk assessment, security implementation, and ethical considerations into a capstone project that addresses real-world cybersecurity challenges. Students will conduct independent research, analyzing and synthesizing scholarly and professional cybersecurity literature to support their project development. They will identify, evaluate, and mitigate cybersecurity risks and threats, applying advanced enterprise security strategies to enhance system defenses. Students will develop critical leadership and collaboration skills throughout the course, managing tasks and responsibilities in a high-pressure project environment. Effective communication is emphasized, as students will present their…

Full course description for Cybersecurity Capstone II - Design, Development, and Implementation

Vulnerability analysis and its connection to exploit development are core skills for one involved in cyber operations. This course covers vulnerability discovery and exploitation. The focus is to understand the pattern of vulnerabilities and attacks to allow students to experience protection, risk mitigation, and identify vulnerabilities in new contexts. Topics will include buffer overflows, privilege escalation attacks, input validation issues, vulnerability discovery (fuzzing and crash dump analysis), exploit development, and mitigations (e.g., DEP, ASLR, ¿).

Full course description for Vulnerability Discovery and Exploitation

This course covers cryptography from both theoretical and practical perspective. The course provides details about advanced cryptography and its applications in the cybersecurity world. Students will learn various cryptographic algorithms and protocols and their relationships from both attack and defense perspectives. Various cryptographic tools to secure contemporary networks will be discussed as well. Students should be able to use advanced cryptographic algorithms based on elliptic curve cryptography.

Full course description for Applied Cryptography

In an era of sophisticated cyber threats, organizations rely on proactive threat intelligence and hunting strategies to defend against advanced network intrusions and data breaches. This course equips students with the knowledge and practical skills to collect, analyze, and apply Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) at tactical, operational, and strategic levels to enhance cyber threat-hunting operations and defensive cybersecurity mechanisms. Students will evaluate cyber threat intelligence frameworks, including MITRE ATT&CK, to identify adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and detect advanced cyber threats. The course covers correlating Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) from multiple intelligence sources, including Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), to strengthen proactive threat detection and response. Emphasis is placed on implementing intelligence-sharing frameworks and protocols to facilitate active cyber defense through threat-hunting and coordinated threat mitigation…

Full course description for Cyber Threat Hunting and Intelligence

As wireless and mobile technologies continue to evolve, they play an increasingly critical role in global communications, cybersecurity, and cyber operations. This course provides an in-depth exploration of cellular and wireless network architectures, emphasizing their security features, vulnerabilities, and risk mitigation strategies. Students will analyze the core architectures and security mechanisms of various generations of cellular networks, assessing operational differences and security challenges unique to wireless environments. The course covers modern encryption standards, authentication protocols, and access control policies, equipping students with the skills to design and implement secure wireless networks. Additionally, students will assess security protocols used in wireless communications to ensure authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality. Through hands-on exercises, students will investigate and mitigate threats to wireless and mobile networks, identifying…

Full course description for Securing Wireless and Mobile Technologies

Virtualization technology has rapidly expanded to become a core feature of various components of enterprise environments. It allows efficient use of physical IT infrastructure by sharing its capabilities among many users or environments. Virtualization is also an integral element to cloud computing and key technology in cybersecurity. Cloud computing provides organizations the ability to create and use IT services efficiently and rapidly without spending capital resources upfront. This course will discuss the capabilities and limitations of modern approaches to virtualization and the variety, complexity, and capabilities of modern cloud platforms and cloud security. The course will include hands-on lab exercises using leading Cloud infrastructure providers (ex. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure). The course will review the applied concepts and techniques with end-to-end Cloud security architecture with real-world case studies using Web/Mobile based applications, and Internet…

Full course description for Virtualization and Cloud Security

Cyber Operations, a more specific area of cybersecurity, is a highly technical field with a hardcore focus on both cyber offense and defense strategies. This course will cover special cyber operations topics that are not covered elsewhere in the MS Cyber Operations program. This course will provide the opportunity to keep the program current by introducing new and in-demand topics in cyber operations including but not limited to SCADA, IoT/IIoT, embedded systems, hardware reverse engineering, secure software development, programmable logic and microcontroller design, RF Analysis, Software defined Networking, etc.

Full course description for Special Topics in Cyber Operations

Any IT development project contains significant risks. However, keeping the status quo is also risky in rapidly changing technological and competitive environments. This course is designed to familiarize the student with risk analysis concepts derived from many sources including financial, actuarial and statistical studies, insurance and risk analysis, software quality assurance methodologies, management and audit trails and many others. Student will learn to assess the risk in an information systems portfolio and develop strategies for managing the many risk types discussed: Prerequisites: MIS 600.

Full course description for Risk Analysis in Information Technology

With Information Technology playing an ever greater role in organizations, and the widespread availability of technology with the ability to collect and create information on everyone, many new ethical issues have been created. This course will frame many current ethic issues in IT and help the student develop methods of analyzing and dealing with these issues in real world situations. Topics may include issues such as privacy, copyright and intellectual property, employee monitoring approaches, multinational information flows, corporate intelligence and others. Hacking, computer security, viruses and other acts of destruction will be reviewed from an ethical perspective.

Full course description for Cyber Ethics

The cyber operation capstone project is aimed at building a connection between cyber concepts and the application of these concepts into a real-world context. Students identify and develop their capstone projects throughout the graduate program and produce a serious, in-depth, scholarly and professional level written component that is reflective of their knowledge and skills that they have gained during the program. This capstone project uses a phased approach where students solidify their project ideas by the end of the first semester and complete the project with an oral defense by the end of the MS program. The final project will demonstrate students' summative expression of what they have learned in the graduate program and hence the project should be a culmination of theory, principles, best industry practices, methodologies, tools, and technologies associated with cyber operations.

Full course description for Cyber Operations Capstone Project