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Cyber Security - MSc

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The MSc Cyber Security course provides a broad foundation for Cyber Security concepts while delivering advanced knowledge and skills in key technical areas....

  • Level Postgraduate Taught
  • Study mode Full Time
  • Location City Centre
  • School School of Computing and Digital Technology
  • Faculty Faculty of Computing, Engineering and The Built Environment

This course is:

Open to International Students

Overview

The MSc Cyber Security course provides a broad foundation for Cyber Security concepts while delivering advanced knowledge and skills in key technical areas. Designed to meet the growing demand from global business and industry for robust cyber security systems, this course underpins the principles and practical professional skills you’ll need to meet the future challenges faced by organisations, particularly when it comes to strategic security planning. 

STEAMhouse building exterior

Introducing STEAMhouse

STEAMhouse is a centre for technology, innovation, creative thinking, prototyping and business development. Our £70 million pound building is the home for all of our Computing courses.

Find out more

This course is open to International students.

What's covered in this course?

This course provides future Cyber Security professionals with the knowledge and skills needed by the employers. Our strong links with industry enable us to teach the most demanding topics. You will develop 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.

Our academic staff members are actively engaged with government and industry to help solve their complex problems. These strong links provide you with plenty of professional opportunities that will help you to acquire valuable exposure to the real life challenges of Cyber Security.

Accredited By

This course is accredited by:

  • BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
  • Engineering Council Accredited Degree

Why Choose Us?

    • At the forefront of advancing information security - Our Centre for Cyber Security is at the forefront of advancing information security. 

    • Research-led, practice-driven teaching - Our teaching is underpinned by our versatile research projects and strong industry links. 

    • Experienced academic staff - Our teaching staff have rich professional experience and are engaged with government and industry, helping to solve complex problems. 

    • State-of-the-art equipment and laboratories - Our industry-standard facilities enable access to forensic software, network security software for penetration testing, and Cloud software. 

    • Home to Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft Academies - We are one of Microsoft’s top UK university-based academies and we are a member of the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance. We are also a Cisco ASC (Academy Support Centre) and one of only 10 Cisco Instructor Training Centres (ITC) in the UK. 

    • Accredited by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT - The course meets standards set by the profession.

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OPEN DAY

Join us for an on-campus Open Day where you'll be able to learn about this course in detail, chat to students, explore our campus and tour accommodation.

Next Event: 24 November 2024

Book now

Entry Requirements

Essential requirements

Essential Requirements

We would normally expect you to hold at least a Second Class Honours degree or equivalent in Computing, Engineering or Information Management.

Applicants without standard entry qualifications but with extensive industrial experience could be considered if they provide evidence of the necessary knowledge and skills to successfully complete the course.

Additional information for EU/International students
Essential

International applicants are required to have IELTS overall band of 6.0 or equivalent.

If you have a qualification that is not listed, please contact us.

Fees & How to Apply

Please select your student status to view fees and apply
  • UK Student
  • International Student

UK students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: MSc

Starting: Jan 2025

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees
  • Full Time
  • 12 months
  • £9,710 in 2024/25
  • Full Time
  • 18 months with Professional Placement*
  • £10,685 in 2024/25

International students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: MSc

Starting: Jan 2025

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees
  • Full Time
  • 12 months
  • £17,710 in 2024/25
  • Full Time
  • 18 months with Professional Placement*
  • £19,485 in 2024/25

Access to computer equipment 

You will require use of a laptop, and most students do prefer to have their own. However, you can borrow a laptop from the university or use one of our shared computer rooms. 

Printing 

You will receive £5 print credit in each year of your course, available after enrolment. 

Field trips 

All essential field trips and associated travel costs will be included in your course fees. 

Access to Microsoft Office 365 

Every student at the University can download a free copy of Microsoft Office 365 to use whilst at university and for 18 months after graduation. 

Key software 

You will be able to download SPSS and Nvivo to your home computer to support with your studies and research. 

Key subscriptions 

Subscriptions to key journals and websites are available through our library. 

Specialist software 

You will be able to access free licences for specialist software such as NetLab.  

Certification training (optional) 

Training is provided by the University to prepare you for the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) and CISCO Certifications without any extra costs. Certification costs apply. 

Specialist equipment (mandatory) 

This course requires the purchase of specialist equipment, including Raspberry PI, Sensors etc, at an estimated cost of £200-2000.  

Excess printing (optional) 

Once you have spent your £5 credit, additional printing on campus costs from 5p per sheet. 

Personal stationery and study materials (optional) 

Based on the past experience of our students, you might find it helpful to set aside about £30 for each year of your studies for your personal stationery and study materials. 

Placement expenses (optional) 

If you choose to undertake a placement, you'll need to budget for accommodation and any travel costs you may incur whilst living or working away from home. 

Competition fees (optional) 

If you choose to participate in some external design competitions you may need to cover submission fees, which can vary from £200-£1000.  

Personal equipment (optional) 

Whilst not essential, it is advised you own a computer or laptop capable with I-7 or above.   

Accommodation and living costs (optional)

The cost of accommodation and other living costs are not included within your course fees. More information on the cost of accommodation can be found in our accommodation pages.

Professional Placement option*

The Professional Placement option will allow you to complete a credit bearing, 20 week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Master’s Degree. The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market. Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace.

You will be responsible for finding and securing your own placement. The University, however, will draw on its extensive network of local, regional and national employers to support you in finding a suitable placement to complement your chosen area of study. You will also benefit from support sessions delivered by Careers+ as well as advice and guidance from your School.

Placements will only be confirmed following a competitive, employer-led selection process, therefore the University will not be able to guarantee placements for students who have registered for the ‘with Professional Placement’ course. All students who do not find a suitable placement or do not pass the competitive selection process will be automatically transferred back to the standard, non-placement version of the course.

Personal statement

You’ll need to submit a personal statement as part of your application for this course. This will need to highlight your passion for postgraduate study – and your chosen course – as well as your personal skills and experience, academic success, and any other factors that will support your application for further study.

If you are applying for a stand alone module, please include the title of the module you want to study in your Personal Statement.

Not sure what to include? We’re here to help – take a look at our top tips for writing personal statements and download our free postgraduate personal statement guide for further advice and examples from real students.

Course in Depth

Module

In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 180 credits):

Professional Placement (optional)

In order to qualify for the award of MSc Cyber Security with Professional Placement, a student must successfully complete all of the Level 7 modules listed above as well as the following Level 6 module:

Download course specification

Download now

The MSc is normally studied over one year full-time or two years part-time.

The course is divided into taught modules of 20 credits and a Master’s project of 60 credits.  Students complete 60 credits for Postgraduate Certificate, 120 credits for Postgraduate Diploma and 180 credits for the full MSc.  Each credit represents 10 notional hours of student learning and assessment.

A range of assessment methods are employed, assessment criteria being published in each assignment brief.  Knowledge and skills are assessed, formatively and summatively, by a number of methods: coursework, examinations (seen and unseen, open and closed-book), presentations, practical assignments, vivas, online forums, podcasts and project work.


This course is accredited by the following organisations:

Our accreditations from these bodies show employers that you have the level of knowledge and skills they need when you graduate.

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT

This degree has been accredited by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. Accreditation is a mark of assurance that the degree meets the standards set by BCS. An accredited degree entitles you to professional membership of BCS, which is an important part of the criteria for achieving Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status through the Institute. Some employers recruit preferentially from accredited degrees, and an accredited degree is likely to be recognised by other countries that are signatories to international accords.

Engineering Council Accredited Degree
Engineering Council Accredited Degree

This degree has been accredited by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT on behalf of the Engineering Council. Accreditation is a mark of assurance that the degree meets the standards set by the Engineering Council in the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence (UK-SPEC). An accredited degree will provide you with some or all of the underpinning knowledge, understanding and skills for eventual registration as an Incorporated (IEng) or Chartered Engineer (CEng). Some employers recruit preferentially from accredited degrees, and an accredited degree is likely to be recognised by other countries that are signatories to international accords. 

Employability

Enhancing your employability skills

This course is designed to ensure that you are a very sought-after graduate with the necessary first-hand, practical expertise of cyber security issues as well as a rigorous academic understanding of the sector.

Globally there is a shortage of experts who can work in cyber security at this very high level, so you will focus on the important technical material you will need for effective decision-making in a highly demanding career.

You will be equipped for a range of careers requiring advanced skills, such as:

  • security architect
  • security analyst
  • security administrator
  • security manager
  • incident response manager
  • risk and compliance analyst. 

You will have the opportunity to get support for obtaining industry recognised Professional Certifications.

Professional certification

There is considerable activity under way to help recognise the professional capability of both individual specialists and training, and continuing education provision on offer to such cyber security specialists.

For instance, new IT Certification and Career Paths are arising such as the Cisco Cyber Security Specialist certification called 'The Securing Cisco Networks with Threat Detection and Analysis (SCYBER)'.

International

Birmingham City University is a vibrant and multicultural university in the heart of a modern and diverse city. We welcome many international students every year – there are currently students from more than 80 countries among our student community.

The University is conveniently placed, with Birmingham International Airport nearby and first-rate transport connections to London and the rest of the UK.

Our international pages contain a wealth of information for international students who are considering applying to study here, including:

Facilities & Staff

[00:00:02] Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the computing tour for Birmingham City University.

[00:00:05] I'm Alex, a second year Computer Science student sitting here today, and I'll be taking you around the facilities here at BCU.

[00:00:11] Right now we're in STEAMhouse. If you're coming on to a computing course, you may be spending time here doing your Innovation Fest project, where you'll be presenting your project that you worked on to industry professionals. So STEAMhouse is a £72 million conversion of the old bike factory that used to be here.

[00:00:31] This is one of the larger learning spaces that we have here at STEAMhouse, completely built around computing. The entire building is modular. All these walls can be opened up and these classes can be made gigantic.

[00:00:43] So here's another space here at STEAMhouse for, sort of like, breakout rooms or for independent learning places you can go as a group to work on projects. To the left of us, there is the business space where visitors come in and they can work on projects there and also allows for students and staff members to integrate with the tech industry. If you'd like to learn more about STEAMhouse, the video link in description. And now I'm going to take you over to Millennium Point.

[00:01:13] Here we are at Millennium Point. This is the level four project space, the space you'll be using in term time to work on things such as the Innovation project. It is also the home of the Maker's Lab, which I'll be showing you in a little bit. It's a completely transformative and modular space.

[00:01:28] Recently, Birmingham City University has spent six and a half million pounds in revamping their Millennium Point building. It's also the area where we will be holding industry events. One of the things that I want to show you very quickly is the Lapsafe here. So Birmingham City University has one of the largest collections of Lapsafes in Europe. And they're not just here in the Millennium Point building. There's also ones over in Parkside and Curzon as well as STEAMhouse. You're allowed to take a laptop out if you haven't got one personally, and you can use it while you're at university for about six or so hours at a time. We also not only have Windows laptops, but also MacBooks.

[00:02:10] So here we are in the Makers Lab, and this is where you'll be spending time as a first year student working on the Innovation facilities there. Basically, this is where the magic happens, right? So in this room is a bunch of component parts and things to work with your systems such as 3D printers.

[00:02:24] So what you can do is you build a schematic up in the software. We send it to the machines and they can print out component parts for your project. It's also a bunch of different other components here at the university that it offers to students that they can use for their projects, such as Arduino, Mark Controllers, and Raspberry Pi is sort of like the heart of your system. You write some code, you flash onto the microcontroller, then it can control the system that you've attached it to. Over here, we've also got a bunch of component parts even using such as light sensors and motion sensors and buttons and keypads and things like that as well.

[00:02:59] So we've got a bunch of previous projects here as well. Here's Sign Genie which is a sign language interpreter, you sign in front of it and it will send back the sign language on the screen here. You can find out more about this project in description below, showing you how they built it from start to finish.

[00:03:16] We also have laser cutting services at University, so if you need, you know, a frame cut out for your project, for example, that we've got here, you can use the laser cutter and cut out little component parts that all fit together as a housing for your project. Okay, So now I think we're going to head down to level one, which houses the network labs and the games lab.

[00:03:42] This is one of the games labs here at BCU. This is more of a high spec facility to help with rendering animation and, you know, running the games that you create as a games development students as well as that. We've also got the different component parts. You need to build a project VR here so you can experiment with VR within the game called events such as Games Jam where students from across Birmingham City University come together to create a game within 24 hours or 48 hours and present it to a panel.

[00:04:14] So this is one of our networking labs here at BCU. It is a Cisco networking lab. All the hardware in here is industry standard and the majority of it is Cisco related. This entire room and several other rooms on this floor are complete separate LAN network from the rest of university. And you can, you know, run tests and simulations and try and configure and connect to of computers within the labs. The software that we use here is called Cisco Packet Tracer or Nethercutt. This is what we use to prototype our networks. And then you can actually physically build them using the hardware in the room to see how it works in practice.

[00:04:55] So this is one of our many computing labs here at Birmingham City University at the College of Computing. We have about 20 computing labs here at the University of all kinds of different software. And then depending on the course that you're doing, we have experts here from industry working as lecturers to have that real world experience and incredibly helpful with helping you to complete your coursework as well as get any additional advice and sort of guide you in the right direction.

[00:05:22] This is one of the big open communal spaces where you can come and catch up on work, but New Macs here that you can work on as well as Windows PCs out at the back can also see that there's more lab space here. So if you want to use a laptop, you can get those as well. Along with that, there's also the main I.T help desk here where you can come in and ask questions if you've got any issues.

[00:05:43] That was just a taste of computing at BCU. If you'd like to experience it yourself, come along to one of our Open Days or applicant taster days in the future. As well as if you'd like to know more about the computing experience. You can watch this video right here.

[00:06:03] You still here? Go watch the video.

Our Facilities

We are constantly investing in our estate and are currently in the process of spending £260 million on new learning facilities. This course will be taught at Millennium Point at the City Centre Campus.

The course is supported with a wide range of cutting-edge facilities in the City Centre Campus. We have a state-of-the-art computer games technology lab which contains high-performance PCs, Sony PlayStation development kits and a range of industry standard software including Unity, Unreal and a suite of professional Microsoft development tools.

We also have many open access areas where students can study together and even hire out laptops for use in these spaces and others within the university.

Within the University there are many internationally recognised research teams giving you the opportunity to collaborate with them on exciting interdisciplinary projects.

Computer networking

The laboratories are well-equipped for all our computer networking courses, as well as specialist areas for practical work such as voice-over internet protocol (VoIP), forensic and ethical hacking technologies, wireless and mobile technologies and radio frequency identification technologies to name but a few.

Software development and computer programming

There are a number of open access, software development and computer programming laboratories that can be used to develop systems and programmes, including database management systems such as MySQL, to name but a few.

Systems laboratories

Our embedded systems laboratories are used to develop real-time systems, such as specialist hardware training and development resources, and industrial-standard software development and simulation tools. These include microcontroller software and robotics design and development, to name but a few.

Electronic systems

To underpin the basic principles of electronic systems, we have a well-equipped laboratory of general and specialist test and measurement kits, including powered prototyping development boards, dual power supplies, frequency generators and counters and digital multi-meters to name but a few.

Forensic computing

Our successful development of forensic computing has led to a specialist forensics laboratory that is fully equipped with essential hardware and software for this sensitive area of study. The laboratory includes high-spec PCs with built-in multi interface Tableau write blockers, EnCase and FTK computer forensic software and steganography detection and analysis software, to name but a few.

More on our facilities

Our staff

Professor Junaid Arshad

Deputy Head of Computing

Junaid is an alumnus of the Innovate UK & DCMS funded CyberASAP programme, commercially prototyping the CyMonD system for effective monitoring & defence of IoT-based systems against cyber-threats. Junaid has successfully achieved research funding from UK and overseas funding agencies, and has worked as a security specialist for a number of...

More about Junaid

Ron Austin

Associate Professor

Senior lecturer Ron Austin is the Associate Professor of the MSc Advanced Computer Networks course and teaches all network-related courses. His expertise and areas of interest include: Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), security technologies, and forensic and ethical hacking.

More about Ron

Dr Muhammad Ajmal Azad

Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security

Muhammad Ajmal Azad is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Cyber Security in the Department of Computer Science and Digital Technologies at Birmingham City University. His research interests broadly cover the areas of network security and privacy.

More about Muhammad Ajmal