Cyber Operations (MS)

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 increasing interconnectedness of digital systems and the rapid evolution of malicious software (malware) pose significant threats to individuals, businesses, and critical infrastructure. As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, the ability to analyze, dissect, and reverse-engineer malware is essential for threat intelligence, incident response, and cybersecurity defense. This course provides an in-depth exploration of malware analysis and reverse engineering methodologies, equipping students with the technical skills to investigate, understand, and mitigate malicious software. Students will analyze the characteristics, propagation methods, and impact of various types of malware, assessing their persistence mechanisms and interaction with host systems and networks. Using modern forensic tools, students will apply advanced static and dynamic analysis techniques to deobfuscate and reverse-engineer malware samples. The course also covers attacker techniques designed to evade…

Full course description for Malware Analysis and Reverse Engineering

The Cyber Operations Capstone Project is a culminating experience where students synthesize, apply, and critically evaluate cybersecurity concepts in a real-world context. Throughout the graduate program, students identify, formulate, and develop their capstone projects, producing a comprehensive, scholarly, and professional-level research project that reflects their advanced knowledge and technical expertise. This capstone follows a phased approach, where students solidify their project scope and research methodology in the initial phase and design, develop, and implement their solutions in the final phase. The project emphasizes evidence-based decision-making, integration of industry best practices, and rigorous academic research to address complex cybersecurity challenges. Students will critically analyze and synthesize relevant scholarly and professional literature, ensuring their work contributes meaningfully to the field of cyber operations. The capstone experience culminates in…

Full course description for Cyber Operations Capstone Project

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

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

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

This course provides a comprehensive exploration of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, which serve as the backbone of critical infrastructure across manufacturing, energy, transportation, and utility sectors. Students will develop an in-depth understanding of ICS/SCADA architectures, their operational environments, and the evolving cybersecurity threats targeting these systems. The course examines the vulnerabilities inherent in industrial automation, the complexities of embedded systems, and the security frameworks designed to mitigate attacks. Through hands-on exercises, case studies, and industry-standard tools, students will gain practical experience in securing and assessing ICS environments.

Full course description for Industrial Control Systems Security and Resilience

The Cyber Operations Capstone Project is a culminating experience where students synthesize, apply, and critically evaluate cybersecurity concepts in a real-world context. Throughout the graduate program, students identify, formulate, and develop their capstone projects, producing a comprehensive, scholarly, and professional-level research project that reflects their advanced knowledge and technical expertise. This capstone follows a phased approach, where students solidify their project scope and research methodology in the initial phase and design, develop, and implement their solutions in the final phase. The project emphasizes evidence-based decision-making, integration of industry best practices, and rigorous academic research to address complex cybersecurity challenges. Students will critically analyze and synthesize relevant scholarly and professional literature, ensuring their work contributes meaningfully to the field of cyber operations. The capstone experience culminates in…

Full course description for Cyber Operations Capstone Project

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