As companies increasingly look to defend themselves against cyber attacks, the number of job openings is growing rapidly. If you have an interest in latest technologies, a flair for problem-solving and a capacity for quick thinking, the BSc (Hons) Cyber Security with Foundation Year is a vital first step towards a fulfilling career.
Prepare for high-level roles in the drive to combat cyber crime
Gain all the theoretical knowledge and practical skills required by today’s cyber security professionals
Learn in the impressive setting of our new Network and Security suite
Take an optional industrial placement year which will stand you in good stead for securing a rewarding job on graduation
Get involved in exciting projects such as the ALICE experiment, on which we are collaborating with leading organisations at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research
Become a highly employable graduate – we are ranked 15th highest among all UK universities and 12th for English institutions, with 96% of graduates in work or further study within six months of completing their degree (HESA 2016)
You can also take the BSc (Hons) Cyber Security without a foundation year. Find out more.
Security is a vital requirement of computer-based systems. As the number of security-related incidents continues to grow, so does the demand for expertise in cyber security.
Foundation Year - helping you to achieve more
Including a foundation year as part of your four-year study programme will give you a head start in your academic and professional life. The foundation year offers the chance to strengthen your skills, knowledge and confidence – with extensive support from our expert staff – before you advance to stage one of your honours degree. It could also be beneficial if you are planning a career change and want to get to grips with aspects of subjects which are new to you.
Our degrees with a foundation year are continuous, meaning that you won’t need to apply again once you have successfully completed the first year.
High-level technical skills
Our BSc (Hons) Cyber Security prepares you to become a successful security specialist. You will study security policies, legal and regulatory requirements, risk and vulnerability assessment, security architecture and development, information assurance methodologies, ethical hacking and incident management.
We will equip you with the know-how to critically analyse and evaluate responses to security-related incidents. You will also develop the technical skills needed to specify, build and develop the physical infrastructure and software to ensure solutions are robust and secure.
An ideal learning environment
We have a new Network and Security Suite featuring a full range of wireless and conventional equipment from manufacturers such as CISCO, D-Link, Linksys and Netgear®. Our teaching entails a compelling mixture of lectures, tutorials and laboratory work.
Boost your employability
Employability skills are integrated into many of the taught modules on the BSc (Hons) Cyber Security. You can even choose to spend a year on a relevant placement working alongside industry professionals – an experience which will give you the edge in the graduate job market.
In addition to assisting with internships and placements, we offer wide-ranging support to help you enhance your future prospects during your studies and to secure graduate roles when you have completed your course. This includes employability workshops and one-to-one support in areas such as CV writing and interview preparation. For more information, please contact our
This module is an introduction to Mathematics in an engineering/technical context. It will concentrate on the principal mathematical tools of Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry and Calculus and will introduce you to the fundamental use of Maths in understanding and predicting the behaviour of engineering and technical processes and systems work.
A crucial stage in the development of the student is in the assumption of responsibility for learning. The student must be self-motivated, organised and independent. The development of critical thinking and meticulousness is fundamental to university study. This module provides the student with a variety of scholarly and communication competencies necessary for a successful career in the engineering and technology fields. The module aims to develop the ability of the student to investigate, analyse and communicate technologic concepts effectively.
The module will develop your ability to work independently and safely, to carry out effective investigation within this technical field, and to apply relevant practical techniques.
The module is designed for students who have studied post-GCSE maths previously. It extends students’ knowledge and understanding of concepts core to the study of computer based courses. It will develop understanding of concepts associated with statistics and discrete mathematics.
This module develops basic problem solving skills and applies them to programming, which will introduce students to the fundamental principles, concepts, and practice of computer programming, and develops the skills needed to design, implement, and test basic computer programmes to control robots to solve the given problems. No prior computer programming experience is assumed, and all practical work is done using an industry-standard programming language and software development environment.
This module explores two related, and yet very distinct, foundations of the practical application of computer science: The first is human-computer interaction; the second is data.
Computer systems do not exist in isolation; they are used by human beings for entertainment – such as videogames – and as tools to support human activities, such as mobile telephones or Web browsers. Therefore, the one half of this module explores how computers and computer software are built to entertain and assist humans by drawing upon research and industry practice in human-computer interaction, including interfaces to computer systems, software design, interaction design, product design, and research into the social impact of computing.
Whilst computers are used by humans as tools and entertainment devices, fundamentally they are nothing but data-processing machines. Indeed, in a very broad sense, the only practical application of computer science is to help build systems that manipulate data. Therefore, the other half of this module explores Data, including its definitions and philosophical underpinnings; its representation in computer systems including data types and an introduction to type theory; various techniques for modelling the storage and movement of data.
This module introduces students to the concepts, contributors, terminology, sub-fields, and history of computer science, whilst encouraging students to develop academic skills in reading, writing, research, and presentation.
This module introduces students to the fundamental principles, concepts, and practice of computer programming, and develops the skills needed to design, implement, and test simple computer programs. No prior computer programming experience is assumed, and all practical work is done using an industry-standard programming language and software development environment.
This module builds on the concepts introduced in Programming I by covering the theory and practical techniques needed to develop usable, robust, and reliable end-user software applications.
Foundations of Cyber Security and Digital Forensics
This module is intended to give students an introduction to the core skills of cyber security and digital forensics. It is divided into equal portions, each covering one of the specialist subject areas of Cyber security.
Networks fundamentals: This part provides a basic understanding of networks based on the ISO 7 layer model, and an understanding of sub-netting and special network applications.
Security fundamentals: provides a basic introduction into security concepts.
Forensic fundamentals: provides a basic introduction to forensics.
This module explores the concepts, technology, and theory that underpin industrial-strength multi-user database systems. Students will be required to develop the practical skills necessary to design and implement robust and scalable databases, and they will develop critical understanding of the issues related to multi-user database development, such as choosing suitable database management systems and tuning them to achieve acceptable performance.
This module provides students with a basic underpinning of the concepts involved with the contact with a mock crime scene, the investigation of desktop computers and other digital storage devices. The module looks at the theoretical background in terms of the configuration of computer systems and the methods deployed in investigating these. The learning outcome will be enhanced by guest presentations from field experts.
This module discusses the principles and methods of how to manage and secure LAN resources. Different methods of system breach will be discussed, as will the mechanisms necessary for detecting and protecting against them. The module will equip students to know how to approach the securing of a LAN both internal and external threats. Students will learn the processes involved in Penetration Testing (Ethical Hacking).
This module is intended to foster employability skills by simulating, as accurately as possible, what it's like to work in a given Computer Science specialism.
This will be done in two successive activities:
Students will be introduced to the “world of work” via a simulated work environment – they will be put into teams that represent fictional companies, but which need to produce real products or engage in realistic work-related activity. This will give students the opportunity to safely discover and explore their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and inclinations before embarking on real-world employment activities.
Students will engage with a real-world industrial brief to develop a small project – such as software, a Web site, a network design, a forensic analysis of a data set, or some similar real or realistic industrial activity – suitable for entry level employees at a relevant industrial employer.
For example, many programmers work as part of a team on large software development projects. Therefore, students working toward a BSc (Hons) Computer Science award will be assembled into fictional software development companies to develop a realistic project, and will thereby experience the challenges that can occur when trying to develop a complicated development project and deliver it on schedule and with high quality. After completion of the fictional-company project, the same teams will work on a small-scale, but real, work-based development project set by a subject-relevant industrial employer, such as a software company.
Communication and security protocols discusses the data protection mechanisms appropriate to various systems and architectures, focusing particularly on cryptographic mechanisms, key managements and the communication security measures. These mechanisms provide data confidentiality and integrity, as well as access control and authentication mechanisms.
This module is aimed at those who study or work in areas that support the operation of the criminal justice system in proving evidence in court. It considers how legal systems have evolved together with theories of knowledge and certainty to provide an underpinning for our legal systems. It examines the elements that must be proven in crimes and the reasons why the law requires this. It considers what must be proved and what can be taken for granted, unless challenged. It looks at the integrity of investigations, both ethical and practical to see how certainty is achieved through legal rules relating to process and procedure and considers how things can be proved and the level of expertise and certainty needed to achieve it. Finally, it considers the relationship between the subject expert and the legal expert and how they work together to achieve justice.
This module is aimed at those who study or work in areas that support the operation of the criminal justice system in proving evidence in court. It considers how legal systems have evolved together with theories of knowledge and certainty to provide an underpinning for our legal systems. It examines the elements that must be proven in crimes and the reasons why the law requires this. It considers what must be proved and what can be taken for granted, unless challenged. It looks at the integrity of investigations, both ethical and practical to see how certainty is achieved through legal rules relating to process and procedure and considers how things can be proved and the level of expertise and certainty needed to achieve it. Finally, it considers the relationship between the subject expert and the legal expert and how they work together to achieve justice.
This module provides a framework for the development of “lifelong learning” skills appropriate to all areas of professional practice; including objective setting, planning, negotiating, implementing, demonstrating and reflecting. The emphasis in this module is on the analysis and evaluation of the work completed within the organisation.
This module also gives students an opportunity to relate their academic knowledge to the work environment.
Students need to be aware of the commercial realities and external factors that influence the success of an organisation. This module provides opportunities for students to acquire an understanding of contemporary issues that may impact on industrial and professional practices relevant to a career within their chosen discipline. During this period of work experience, students can gain a deeper appreciation of the responsibilities arising from both corporate and individual responses to such issues, thus enabling them to relate to the wider world when exploring a personal direction for potential career development.
Organisations are now exposed to an increasingly dynamic and sophisticated security threat landscape. They also face a growing diversity of security-related vulnerabilities in their assets derived, eg from new technologies, improved connectivity and complexity of software. Therefore, assessment of such elements becomes essential to prevent that risks materialise as incidents, incurring in a much bigger impact. Risk assessment is an important instrument of proactive security - it helps informed decisions about priorities for defence.
The module enables students to gain foundation and practical skills in security risk and vulnerability assessment using a mixture of problem-based learning, lab-based tutorials and lectures. It exposes students to methods, standards and tools used in industry and, to some extent, to novelties coming from research.
This module provides high level functions of security management within an organisational context. Considerations area given to the security policies, standards and procedures. Moreover, the module focuses on the implementation process for establishing business continuity and disaster management. Also the process of incident handling and reporting. The module encompasses on two roles commonly defined in the security community: Security Architect and Security Officer.
The goal of this module is to understand and implement the common technical security controls available to prevent, detect and recover from security incidents and to mitigate the identified risks in the future trends. You will learn how to: Identify mitigations for the most significant threats to mobile apps, reduce the risk posed by new technologies such as mobile applications, protect data at rest and in motion, secure credentials with device key storage and more.
Because of the recent development and success of Internet along with the rapid advances in digital technologies it is very easy to reach, copy, duplicate and distribute the digital media without any degradation in quality. Therefore, there has been growing concern about the protection of the intellectual property rights for digital media including music, image and video. This course offers fundamental coverage of theoretical foundations of digital media security which becomes increasingly prominent in digital environment as well as the practical implementation of media security systems. The course includes data hiding, digital watermarking, authentication, fingerprinting/tracing and digital rights management.
This module enables students to demonstrate the ability to independently develop a substantial piece of work related to their specialism. It can be either a significant piece of research following a recognised research methodology, or it can be a significant “design and development” project to create, test and evaluate an innovative solution in computing.
Students will be supported and mentored by a member of academic staff, but the project will be defined and implemented by the student.
40 Credits
core
Coursework
Please note that our modules are subject to change - we review the content of our courses regularly, making changes where necessary to improve your experience and graduate prospects.
The BSc (Hons) Cyber Security entails a mixture of lectures, tutorials and laboratory work. You will learn in our Network Development Suite which has a full range of wireless and conventional equipment from manufacturers like CISCO, D-Link, Lynksys and Netgear.
You can also choose to spend a year in industry on a placement, working alongside professionals. This will enhance your career prospects and give you a distinct advantage in the job market.
How you are assessed
Modules are typically assessed via one or more coursework assignments and/or one or more examinations. Some modules are only assessed via coursework, others are only assessed via examination, while others use a mix of both.
Depending on the nature of a given coursework assignment, you may receive the assignment specification at the beginning of the module for hand-in at the end of the module. Alternatively, you may be given it later in the module to complete before a set deadline.
Personal academic tutoring
Your personal academic tutor will work with you to help you get the most out of your time at university. Having someone to talk to about your academic progress, your university experience and your professional aspirations is hugely valuable. We want you to feel challenged in your studies, stretched but confident to achieve your academic and professional goals.
GCSE Maths and English Grade C/Grade 4 (or above) or equivalent qualification
IELTS
6.0 (with 5.5 in each skills area)
Interview / Audition
N/A
Portfolio
N/A
Alternative entry qualifications:
BTEC - MPP
Pass Access to HE Diploma 60 credits: 45 at Level 3 and 15 at Level 2.
We usually consider an A-level in General Studies as a supplementary qualification. A good application/performance will be taken into account if you do not meet the criteria/offer conditions.
Our entry requirements for this course should be read together with the University's general entry requirements, which details subjects we accept, alternative qualifications and what we're looking for at Derby.
Fees and funding
2020/21 Fees
Full-time
Part-time
UK/EU
£9,250 per year*
N/A
International
£14,045 per year
N/A
* The fees stated above are for the 2019/20 academic year; fees for 2020/21 have not yet been confirmed by the UK government. We will update this information as soon as it is available.
Full-time students applying to start in September should apply for this course through UCAS or you can apply directly to the University for an undergraduate course if you’re not applying to any other UK university in the same year.
Full-time students applying to start in September should apply for this course through UCAS or you can apply directly to the University for an undergraduate course if you’re not applying to any other UK university in the same year.
There is significant demand for skills in developing, maintaining and securing computer systems, as well as on the engineering side of security protocol development and research.
This degree delivers comprehensive training and equips you with the personal attributes you need for a variety of careers within the cyber security field.
Contact us
If you need any more information from us, eg on courses, accommodation, applying, car parking, fees or funding, please contact us and we will do everything we can to help you.
Like most universities, we operate extended teaching hours at the University of Derby, so contact time with your lecturers and tutors could be anytime between 9am and 9pm. Your timetable will usually be available on the website 24 hours after enrolment on to your course.
Additional costs and optional extras
We’re committed to providing you with an outstanding learning experience. Our expert teaching, excellent facilities and great employability prepare you for your future career. As part of our commitment to you we aim to keep any additional study costs to a minimum. However, there are occasions where students may incur some additional costs.
Included in your fees
specialist computing labs,
access to software and equipment,
Mandatory costs not included in your fees
Printer consumables approx. £100 per year
Portable hard drive/memory card approx. £120
Portfolio case approx. £40
Core text books approx. £250
Optional costs not included in your fees
Not required but useful: personal computer or tablet computer approx. £400
Please note: Our courses are refreshed and updated on a regular basis. If you are thinking about transferring onto this course (into the second year for example), you should contact the programme leader for the relevant course information as modules may vary from those shown on this page.
