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Operational Security Management

Learn to:
  • Anticipate cyber behaviours, both deliberately adversarial and unintentionally inept, that would undermine an organisation's viability
  • Critically evaluate the vulnerabilities of an organisation through active probing of its systems
  • Manage cyber resources to maintain an organisation's viability in the face of adversarial or unintentional threats


Why is this important?

At its core, operatoinal security management is concerned with systematically addressing threats, vulnerabilities and the negative consequences that occur should a threat exploit a vulnerability in any organisation's day-to-day cyber engagement. In that sense, it uses the vocabulary of risk management, but is particularly concerned with the home team engaging in concrete patterns (which may be deliberately randomised to hide the pattern) of activity that anticipate and foil an adversary's activity.


Content

This module draws together the content from earlier other modules and presents the various interacting topics in an operational context. The focus is on operational security management relating to the cyber domain: maximising the benefits that flow from cyber engagement, whilst minimising the harms, through deliberate, managed activity. Some of this activity is obvious and directly cyber related: crypto key management or firewall rule change-control for example. Some is less obvious and indirectly cyber related: HR protocols for joiners and leavers for example.

Module content will cover:

  • secure operations management and service delivery
  • cryptography
  • network security
  • system security
  • application security
  • physical security
  • vulnerability assessment
  • dependable/resilient/survivable systems


Delivery and assessment

8 half-day sessions will be regularly spaced across Year 3. Within each half day session, there will be a mix of lecture, tutorial and practical activity.

Assessment is 100% coursework for this module.

Essential information

Entry Requirements
A level: AAA (STEM subjects preferred)
IB: 36 points (STEM subjects preferred), with a minimum of 4 in English

UCAS Code
H651

Award
Degree of Bachelor of Science (BSc)

Duration
3 years full time (30 weeks per academic year)

Tuition fees
Find out more about fees and funding

How to apply Undergraduate admissions