Curriculum for Computer Networking & Cybersecurity Degree

There is a difference between what science is, its history and meaning, and what science does through experimental and applied practices. This interdisciplinary course invites students to examine how scientific knowledge is defined, constructed, and communicated. Students will critically analyze different examples of science in society to understand how science shapes and is shaped by culture, power, and people. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to evaluate the ways in which science reflects and transforms the world around us.

How does technological change impact people across the globe? What gets lost-or found-in translation? Through interdisciplinary analysis, this course examines technological change as a global phenomenon. We will examine how innovations from one perspective can be exploitative from another, investigating how technologies evolve and affect each other across different times and places. The course emphasizes ethical inquiry and considers how the economic, political, and cultural forces driving technological change affect people's lives differently depending on context, identity, and access. Students will leave with a deeper understanding of how science and technology shape and are shaped by the world.

This course equips students with interdisciplinary tools and methods to analyze and respond to complex, real-world problems. Drawing on diverse frameworks and theories, students will explore how their own identities and experiences shape their understanding of contemporary issues. Emphasis is placed on synthesizing knowledge across fields to develop innovative, contextually relevant solutions. Students will communicate their insights effectively through a range of expressive modes tailored to varied audiences and purposes.

In this course, students will learn the foundational concepts of cybersecurity, cybercrime, and digital forensics. The course will cover topics including system and data security principles, risk management, ethical hacking, cybercrime, and cyber terrorism. Students will examine the implications of cybersecurity and adversarial behavior while gaining hands-on experience in identifying threats and conducting digital investigations.

This course introduces students to operating system concepts and computer organization principles. Students will learn to apply data representation, memory management, process/thread management, CPU scheduling, process synchronization, file systems, I/O operations, storage management, and virtual memory. Advanced topics cover system security, networking, and virtualization. Hands-on experiential learning reinforces theoretical concepts and develops practical skills in operating system functionality and computer system organization.

Students will be introduced to networking technology and the integral part it plays in business and society. Organizations expect the communication in information systems will be reliable, effective, and secure. Topics include networking frameworks, basic network protocols and topologies, communication methods, information security, security vulnerabilities, and network troubleshooting. Students will gain factual, conceptual, and applied knowledge regarding network communications, security, technology evolution, infrastructure components, and design issues.

This course is a thorough review of the foundational protocols used on the Internet and modern enterprise networks. With a focus on protocols aligned with the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and OSI models, students will explore the development and structure of protocols, their role in data communications, and integration within network-based applications. Students will engage in hands-on activities aimed at protocol analysis, network troubleshooting, and protocol-related security concerns.

Students build and maintain secure infrastructure environments through intensive hands-on labs. As students develop their expertise, they respond and troubleshoot to system and network anomalies while maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of common enterprise network services. Through this applied experience, students plan and recover systems from failures, ensuring operational resilience and demonstrating the practical skills required for modern systems administration and cybersecurity defense.

This course provides an introduction to computer and data network security. Students will examine the rationale and necessity for securing computer systems and data networks, as well as methodologies for implementing security, security policies, best current practices, testing security, and incident response.

Students will be introduced to the foundational technologies and security principles of web-based applications. This includes communication protocols, data formatting standards, client and server-side scripting, databases programming, and interactions within a tiered-application architecture. Students will gain a perspective on the importance of web applications in the modern enterprise with a focus on security threats, common vulnerabilities, and the practical application of security controls to mitigate those risks.

Students will learn how to integrate scripting into operating system management. They will learn how to automate system administration functions and cybersecurity operations in Windows and Linux operating systems. PowerShell and Linux shell scripting will be explored to manage and monitor operating system functions and web activity. Students will create scripts that can be reused in production networks.

Students will gain a global and comprehensive understanding of information assurance. We will discuss international information assurance issues, information assurance models, security architectures, risk assessment, incident response, cryptography, government and business guidelines and criteria, compliance, audits, business continuity, and disaster recovery. We will examine the inter-relationships between these topics and the goal of achieving a balance between information assurance and systems performance.

Students will examine network-based threats, whether originating from the Internet or the local LAN, and learn about ways to protect, detect, and defend the enterprise network from such attacks. The relationship between user network policy and securing the network will also be explored. Students will participate in hands-on experiments and demonstrate their understanding of subject matter via labs, projects and presentations

Students in this course will integrate concepts from the previous courses in the security sequence into a comprehensive perspective of security for an information system. The security topics will include hardware, software, malware, protocols, threat models, services, analysis, social engineering, employee responsibility, recovery, incident response, and prevention. Students will gain practical experience in securing an operational network while maintaining necessary services.