Master of Science in Cybersecurity Engineering

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

Students learn how to apply the engineering research process and methods of inquiry to solve engineering problems. Literature survey for research work, building expertise in the areas of interest, this involves critiquing current research work. Basic principles of experimental designs; analyze and evaluate the results. Evaluate the quality of the results and limitations. They will also learn how to communicate findings in specific engineering formats to specialist audiences. Students will learn basic project management and team work skills in addition to research ethics. Course project will allow the students to apply research methodology components on research problems of their choice. Students, possibly in small teams, are expected to present and defend their research proposals.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

The course introduces some of the encryption / decryption principals, e.g., one-key encryption, two-key encryption in addition to the use of hashing in integrity verification and public key cryptosystems. The course also introduces basic mathematical principles necessary for encryption. Students are expected to be trained on Codebreaking techniques and design of Cryptographic protocols.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

The intent of this course is to provide insight into enterprise security from a management perspective. Students will understand the need for policies and procedures by identifying security threats and vulnerabilities in the organization. The course provides knowledge and skills for students to effectively implement and/or oversee security policies. Materials of the course include: access control, dissemination control, accountability, security storage, security education, confidential information transmission disposal, and destruction; security violations and compromises, and program oversight. Students will discuss problems, issues, ideas, possible solutions, and the interaction between executive branches in the organizations. Legal and ethical implications of security management are also considered.

Prerequisite: Grad. Standing

Prerequisite: Completion of at least 12 credits

The student has to undertake and complete a research topic under the supervision of a faculty member. The thesis work should provide the student with in-depth perspective of a particular research problem in his chosen field of specialization. It is anticipated that the student be able to carry out this research fairly independently under the direction of the supervisor. The student is required to submit a final thesis documenting the research and defend the work in front of a committee.

Prerequisite: Completion of at least 12 credits

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

Elements of modeling and simulation, Simulation techniques, Review of probability theory basics, Discrete-event simulations, Design of simulation models, Generation of pseudo random numbers, Testing Random Number Generators (RNG), Random variates generation, Commonly used distributions in modeling & simulation, Statistical analysis of the output of simulations, Verification and Validation, Simulation languages and Packages, Applications of modeling and simulation to computer science and engineering. A term paper and a final project are required from each student.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

The course discusses different types of malicious attacks on computer networks, and methods of responding to them. Students learn how to protect computer networks. The course concentrates mainly on layers below the application layer. The course will also discuss IPSec, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), firewalls.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course covers protocols and specifications for secure communication such as WWW and Web Services security (SSL, SET), E-mail security (PGP). Other topics include application-level threats, malware, social engineering attacks, operating system holes, web security, privacy and e-mail hacking. The course will be mainly concerned with security at the Application layer and above.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course covers cloud and data security, addressing known risks and vulnerabilities and focuses on sound architectural design for secure computing. It covers management, governance, audit, legal issues, and meeting regulatory compliance. It also covers how to deploy critical security mechanisms related to secure isolation, application security, data protection, access control, privacy, key management, provisioning, identity and authorization management, high-availability, management, and compliance in a cloud-enabled environment.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course describes malicious software, infection process, detection approaches, obfuscation. The course also covers security testing and evaluation approaches: static analysis, dynamic analysis, software fingerprinting, reverse-engineering, code certification. The course will also cover security standards, vulnerability analysis and risk analysis, security plan elaboration.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

Students are expected to learn about the application of security concepts to database technology. More specifically, the course covers topics related to fundamentals of data security, risks and vulnerabilities in BDMS, data privacy and confidentiality, query privacy, database integrity, understand the various database security models, confidentiality of the databases on the cloud, hiding query patterns.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course covers advanced topics in operating systems including process management and communication, remote procedure calls, memory management (including shared memory and virtual memory), checkpointing and recovery, file system, I/O subsystem and device management, distributed file systems and security. Other topics include identifying security threats and monitoring network security implementations. Students will learn how to use best practices to configure operating systems to industry security standards.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course describes fundamental security practices adopted to implement security in computer systems, networks and web applications. The course follows a hands-on approach and provides an in-depth understanding of fundamental security principles and cryptographic methods used to protect the confidentiality, integrity and authentication of users' private information. Topics include hashing, secret-key encryption, public-key encryption, digital signatures, digital certificates and public-key infrastructures.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course describes the prominent methods that are used to conduct computer crime investigations. The course gives an in-depth knowledge of evidence collection and management, the different steps involved in the making of a search warrant and how to handle the evidence gathered following the search. The course also describes the needed steps to achieve a full investigation report. Topics include introduction to cybercrimes; Legal aspects and computer crime laws; Investigation process, evidence identification and preservation; Reporting process: investigation and analysis reports.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

Performance Evaluation of Computer and Network Systems (PECNS) has become an increasingly important issue given their general pervasiveness. The course will provide an up-to-date treatment of the fundamental techniques, concepts, algorithms and applications of computer and network systems performance analytic and queueing modeling, simulation and measurement. The application of these techniques will be demonstrated by case studies and examples. A final project will be required.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course covers security aspects of electronic systems and wireless networks. Topics include e-commerce, e-government, e-services, biometrics-based security, wireless networks security, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), intrusion detection systems, and computer network security risk management. A refresher of fundamentals of e-security concepts including e-security tools, like Public key cryptosystems, and trust management systems. A term paper and a final project are required from each student.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

Trusted computing concepts, Trusted Computing Technology Components, Trusted Boot, The Trusted Software Stack, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), TPM Keys, Secure Storage, Administration of Trusted Devices, Privacy and Direct Anonymous Attestation, Virtualization and Trusted Computing, Applications of Trusted Computing, Trusted Computing Policy Issues.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course describes some of the well-known security attacks and vulnerabilities in general software, networks and web applications. The course also covers important defense mechanisms used to protect against these attacks. Topics include man-in-the-middle attacks, denial-of-service attacks, DNS attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, cross-site request forgery attacks, and SQL injection attacks. The course takes a hands-on approach and provides an in-depth understanding of how the security attacks and countermeasures work.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

Vulnerabilities in current digital system design flow and the physical attacks on digital systems. Building secure and trusted hardware. Design Intellectual Property Protection and Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs). Physical and Side Channel Attacks and Countermeasures. Hardware Trojans. Hardware-based random number generators, watermarking of intellectual property (IP) blocks, FPGA security, passive and active metering for piracy prevention.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

This course covers emerging and advanced topics in Cybersecurity Engineering. The contents will vary depending on the topic

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing

The student is expected to carry out an independent study on a current issue in a selected area of Cybersecurity Engineering. This study is to be supervised by a faculty member and requires the approval of the department. The student is required to produce a formal report, which will be evaluated by his instructor.

Prerequisite: Grad. Standing

The course deals with formulation, solution and implementation of optimization models such as linear programming, dynamic programming, integer programming, quadratic programming, convex programming, geometric programming and unconstrained optimization for analyzing complex systems problems in industry.

Prerequisite: Grad. Standing

This course covers solution of linear equations, Eigenvalue eigenvector decomposition, Special functions, Complex analysis, Fourier analysis, Laplace transform, Introduction to partial differential equations. The course deals with various examples from engineering disciplines.