Cyber Security (Software Security) University of Bristol

Overview

New approaches to building software, such as continuous delivery cloud-based scalability, and Open Source have accelerated technological innovation. Modern software now underpins vast, complex systems across society, from energy and finance to healthcare and smart transport.

This new software ecosystem has also given rise to new forms of security threats, malware and system vulnerabilities. There is also now a heightened need from end-users, regulators and other stakeholders for accountability, privacy, and demonstrable and effective data protection measures from developers.

The consequence is an increased worldwide demand for software security experts who are able to understand the security challenges that modern software brings and offer strong solutions to mitigate harm to valuable software-enabled infrastructures. There is a major shortage of software security experts with the skills required to protect software-intensive businesses from disruption that can have large-scale impacts on society and massive business losses.

The Cyber Security (Software Security) course from University of Bristol aims to:

• Enable a deep understanding of fundamental concepts, design principles, building blocks and methods to understand and mitigate against cyber threats that impact critical and complex software systems.
• Give you hands-on experience in articulating software security issues by working with devices, systems and networks utilised in realistic environments such as state-of-the-art testbeds for inter-meshed systems, CNI and IoT.
• Equip you with the ability to apply these security principles in analysing cybersecurity problems and challenges from a variety of vantage points: networks, systems, human factors and risk, control systems and Internet of Things devices, reason about the security and privacy properties of underlying software and implications in large-scale and inter-meshed settings.
• Enable you to apply secure software engineering principles and lifecycle to design and implement software solutions that proactively and reactively address security and privacy issues by default.
• Provide you with the skills to reason critically about complex problems that require evaluation and analysis from a multi-dimensional perspective including technical, human and organisational aspects.

Career opportunities:

This programme is informed by the skills gap identified by industry. Following graduation from this MSc, students will have the opportunity to play a fundamental role in delivering cyber security on a large scale through their careers.

Graduates may find roles as software security engineer/analyst, security software developer, network security engineer, penetration testing and security audit. You will be capable of critically evaluating and synthesising research literature, developing and deploying systems, and communicating with others in their field and other disciplines. Top graduates from this degree will be able to proactively advance the development of software security or move on to doctoral studies in cyber security.