CYBR171 (2024) - Cybersecurity Fundamentals

Prescription

Hacker—hero or villain? Explore the world of cyber criminals, state-sponsored hackers, and commercial and government defenders. Engage directly with cybersecurity professionals as you explore diverse career paths — from incident response to digital forensics. This foundational course introduces you to social engineering, security and privacy concerns, physical security, common threats, attacks, and the techniques, frameworks, and tools used to defend and protect against them. You will leave the course equipped with essential skills to be a proactive guardian of your security without needing to be a programmer.

Course learning objectives

Students who pass this course will be able to:

1. Apply security techniques and tools to improve their security posture and those around them.
2. Analyse security problems, identify threats and propose appropriate mitigations.
3. Evaluate ethical and legal issues related to cybersecurity, cybercrime and cyberwarfare.

Course content

This course covers concepts such as cryptography, authentication and authorisation, malware, network offensive and defensive technologies, social engineering, privacy and case studies.  

There are two streams for this course. Students must enroll in CRN 30039 who are attending University and secondary school STAR students must enroll in CRN 36104.

Though the teaching format of this offering has been modified to accommodate secondary school students, both courses cover the same content and have identical learning objectives. 
 
For those in CRN 30039, we’ve designed this course for in-person study, and to get the most of out it we strongly recommend you attend lectures on campus. Most assessment items, as well as tutorials/seminars/labs/workshops will only be available in person. Any exceptions for in-person attendance for assessment will be looked at on a case-by-case basis in exceptional circumstances, e.g., through disability services or by approval by the course coordinator.

Withdrawal from Course

Withdrawal dates and process:
https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/course-additions-withdrawals

Lecturers

We will have industry speakers giving guest lectures during the course, these will be recorded and provided online unless the speaker has requested us not to record the lecture for commercial or other reasons.

Teaching Format

In 2024, teaching is primarily face-to-face. Lectures will be recorded where possible to ensure continuity for students who cannot attend in person. All students who can are expected to attend the tests and labs in person; students must have a good justification and obtain permission from the course coordinator to take the tests.
 
During the trimester there will be two lectures and one lab session per week.

Student feedback

The formal student feedback is generally good. In 2020 and 2021, the COVID pandemic forced us to make several changes to the course. Unsurprisingly, many of those changes did not work out as well as the normal course offering, and we modified the course in 2023 to mostly follow the 2019 version, with several improvements learned during the pandemic.

Dates (trimester, teaching & break dates)

• Teaching: 26 February 2024 - 31 May 2024
• Break: 01 April 2024 - 14 April 2024
• Study period: 03 June 2024 - 06 June 2024
• Exam period: 07 June 2024 - 22 June 2024

Other Classes

Students must sign up in myAllocator for a regular one-hour laboratory session each week (starting from week 2). Students should plan to attend all weeks to get support in doing coursework and studying for tests.

Set Texts and Recommended Readings

Required

There is not required textbook for CYBR 171. You can learn all the course content from the lecture notes and slides.
Some online materials are available on the course website.

Mandatory Course Requirements

There are no mandatory course requirements for this course.

If you believe that exceptional circumstances may prevent you from meeting the mandatory course requirements, contact the Course Coordinator for advice as soon as possible.

Assessment

The course will be assessed through four lab exercises, an assignment and two tests.
 
The mark in the second test will also count as the mark in the first test if the mark in the second test is greater than the mark in the first test.
 
This means that you have the opportunity to improve your grade by doing better in the second test.

Assessment Item	Due Date or Test Date	CLO(s)	Percentage
Test 1 (1 hour)	Week 6	CLO: 1,2,3	25%
Assignment	Week 11	CLO: 1,2,3	15%
Test 2 (2 hours)	During assessment period	CLO: 1,2,3	50%
Four laboratory exercises	Weeks 3, 5, 7, 9	CLO: 1,2,3	10%

Penalties

Late submissions for exercises and the assignment will incur a penalty of 10 percent of the total points available per day, including weekends and holidays.  Note that Nuku rounds up the day to the next whole number. For instance, if an assignment is worth 100 points and you submit it 1.3 days late it will be rounded up to 2 days, your maximum attainable score will be reduced to 80 points, and so forth. Late penalties will be applied automatically by Nuku based on the submission timestamp, so ensure timely submission to avoid deductions.

Extensions

Individual extensions will only be granted if there are special personal circumstances and should be negotiated with the course coordinator before the deadline whenever possible. Documentation (eg, medical certificate) may be requested if the extension is long.

Submission & Return

You are permitted to use ChatGPT or similar technologies to help you learn and complete work in this course although what you submit must be understood by you, edited and amended by you and checked for correctness.
 
When used well, AI can be a great tool to support your learning. It can help you develop ideas, translate languages, generate images, create a song, or summarise texts. AI stops being a good idea when you are not learning, and the AI is doing too much of the work. Consider this: if you have to complete a task without AI in an exam—would you be okay?
 
Submit your laboratory exercises and the assignment via Nuku.
 
The lab exercises can be resubmitted with no penalty until the due date, you will receive feedback to improve your submission because the idea is to gain mastery and the feedback is formative.
 
Student work may be used during the formal Engineering NZ re-accreditation visit to VUW scheduled for 2024, as part of the evaluation process for the programme.

Marking Criteria

All assessment is marked by tutors or lecturers following a marking scheme produced by the lecturers when the assessment is developed.

Workload

The total workload for CYBR 171 is 150 hours. In order to maintain satisfactory progress in CYBR 171, you should plan to spend an average of 10 hours per week on this course. A plausible and approximate breakdown for these hours would be:

• Lectures and laboratories: 4 hours per week
• Consolidating lectured material, through readings, completion of exercises, and assignments: 6 hours per week

Teaching Plan

See:https://nuku.wgtn.ac.nz/courses/22683/modules

Communication of Additional Information

All online material for this course can be accessed via Nuku.

Links to General Course Information

• Academic Integrity and Plagiarism: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/exams/academic-integrity
• Academic Progress: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/progress/academic-progess (including restrictions and non-engagement)
• Dates and deadlines: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/dates
• Grades: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/progress/grades
• Special passes: Refer to the Assessment Handbook, at https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/documents/policy/staff-policy/assessment-handbook.pdf
• Statutes and policies, e.g. Student Conduct Statute: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/about/governance/strategy
• Student support: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/support
• Students with disabilities: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/st_services/disability/
• Student Charter: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/learning-teaching/learning-partnerships/student-charter
• Student Feedback on University courses may be found at: http://www.cad.vuw.ac.nz/feedback/feedback_display.php
• Terms and Conditions: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/study/apply-enrol/terms-conditions/student-contract
• Turnitin: http://www.cad.vuw.ac.nz/wiki/index.php/Turnitin
• University structure: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/about/governance/structure
• The Use of Te Reo Māori for Assessment Policy:
  Victoria University values te reo Māori. Students who wish to submit any of their assessments in te reo Māori must refer to The Use of Te Reo Māori for Assessment Policy
  He mea nui te reo Māori ki te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika. Ki te pīrangi koe ki te tuhituhi i ō aro matawai i roto i te reo Māori, tēnā me mātua whakapā atu ki te kaupapa here, The Use of Te Reo Māori for Assessment Policy
• VUWSA: http://www.vuwsa.org.nz

Offering CRN: 30039

Points: 15
Duration: 26 February 2024 - 23 June 2024
Starts: Trimester 1
Campus: Kelburn