Prerequisite: Admission to the ACES Living-Learning Program
HACS100 introduces first-semester living-learning program students to cybersecurity through a multidisciplinary exploration of current topics. Student-driven investigation, discussions, and interactions with professional cybersecurity experts from industry and government allow students to explore both the technical and non-technical aspects of the field.
Prerequisite: HACS100
HACS101 prepares second-semester living-learning program students for team research that will be conducted in HACS200. Students gain an understanding across the breadth of cybersecurity including system monitoring, networking basics and penetration testing. An applied approach to statistics is also included to prepare students to assess the data collected for their research projects. The course is conducted with a hands-on approach applying virtual environments to practice the concepts learned in the technical lectures each week.
Prerequisite: HACS100 and HACS101
Fulfills GenEd Requirement: DSSP
HACS200 continues the foundational training in cybersecurity for third semester living-learning program students through the research, planning, designing, building and execution of a honeypot experiment. A honeypot is a computer or a site intended as a "trap" for attackers. The honeypot appears to be an attractive target, yet is not truly part of a network and can be used as a monitoring toll to collect data about attacks.
Choose 2 seminars for a total of 6 credits
Students will have several seminar options each semester focused on varied topics related to cybersecurity:
Fulfills GenEd Requirement: DSHS, SCIS
(Offered in Spring) This course focuses on the relationships among accounting, economics and cybersecurity. Topics include: (1) the cost-benefit aspects of managing cybersecurity resources, (2) determining the costs of cybersecurity breaches on corporations (3) deriving the optimal amount a firm should invest in cybersecurity activities.
(Offered in Fall) This course provides students with an introduction to professional communication in the cybersecurity field. Students will explore written and oral communication with a focus on their professional role and audience. Case studies will give students an opportunity to experience the multi-faceted decisions that come with communicating cybersecurity topics.
Fulfills GenEd Requirement: DSSP
(Offered in Spring) Introduction to software reverse engineering tools and methodologies. Fundamental topics will be introduced: compilers, linkers, loaders, assembly language, as well as static and dynamic analysis tools. Hands-on work will develop the skills and knowledge used to reverse engineer a binary without access to the original source code.
Fulfills GenEd Requirement: DSSP
(Offered in Spring) This course examines the many roles, capabilities, organizations, and objectives involved in security incident handling and management. Core course content includes three major components: learning about the skills sets that people utilize in security incident handling and management, participating in role-playing exercises to understand how organizations involved in security incident handling interact, and finally putting it all together by conducting exercises in a lab environment simulating security incident discovery, handling, and management.
Fulfills GenEd Requirement: DSSP
(Offered in Fall) Students in this course will understand and differentiate between the various fields of digital forensics, such as memory, hard drive, and network traffic analysis. The course will cover the legalities involved with forensics investigations, explore the wide variety of digital forensics tools, including both open source and proprietary, and learn about the different types of forensic artifacts that can be acquired and analyzed.
Fulfills GenEd Requirement: DSHS, SCIS
(Offered in Fall) This course will examine the implications of the information revolutions of the last 30-40 years and the effects on politics, law (domestic and international), economics, and society. The course will provide an overview of some of the implications of a volatile, extensive, and ongoing technological change and discuss the need for professionals who see cyberspace as a broad domain requiring multidisciplinary conversations and skills.
(Offered in Spring) This course is a survey of games and puzzles and the logic and mathematics behind them. The course will include number theory, graph theory, and combinatorics, and will provide a broad survey of logic and math puzzles. Throughout the course, students will learn about puzzles and their place in math, science and cryptography. They will also acquire the important critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to analyze and solve these puzzles and understand what makes them difficult.
Students will complete 3 credits of experiential learning from research and/or practical experiences.
Students are encouraged to engage in research in order to gain greater insight into a specific area within cybersecurity, obtain an appreciation for the subtleties and difficulties associated with the production of knowledge and fundamental new applications, and to prepare for graduate school and the workforce.
Cybersecurity experience is defined as an experiential learning activity either with a University of Maryland entity or with an external organization that will provide valuable, hands-on experience to supplement the knowledge learned in other ACES coursework. This course is intended to help you reflect on your cybersecurity experience and to learn from others’ cybersecurity experiences. It is also intended to help you gain professional skills that will aid you in your career. To be eligible to take 297 you need 135 completed hours of cybersecurity-related practical experience