This is the transcript for the video Master of Cybersecurity
Jennifer Parcell 0:05
Okay, well, let’s get underway for our latest webinar session. Welcome to you all, to the Master of Cybersecurity at UTS session. It’s exciting to have you with us. This is one of our latest offerings at UTS. So we’re really looking forward to taking you through this course and all it has to offer. My name is Jennifer, and I’ll be your host for this evening. I am part of the Future students team here at UTS. To kick things off, I’d like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose ancestral lands our City Campus at UTS now stands, I’d also like to pay my respects to elders, both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land. Now, just a little bit about UTS. Basically, this is to say that we know what we’re doing when it comes to teaching our students and teaching them in particular about engineering and it, we have really great rankings were the number one young university in Australia, which means when it comes to something like technology and cybersecurity, we’re right where you want to be. We have great rankings for our teachings, and for our courses in computing, science and engineering, including a few number one rankings there. So we do have a really solid base of experience mixed with quality when it comes to teaching. So at UTS, you can rest assured by joining us, we know what you’re doing and you’re going to get a really solid education and some great experience when it comes to university. Now, I mentioned that we have a panel of experts and that we do so I would like to get underway introducing them to you or maybe more to the point them introducing themselves. So you know who we’ve got here and who’s going to help talk you through this master cybersecurity course. First off, I’d like to introduce Dr. Wayne Brookes. Wayne.
Wayne Brookes 2:03
Thanks. So my name is Wayne Brooks. I am a Deputy Head of School at UTS in our School of Electrical and Data engineering, and cybersecurity is a key part of our school as we’ll talk about today.
Jennifer Parcesll 2:17
Thanks, Wayne. Next up we have Dr. Priya Nanda.
Priyadarsi Nanda 2:25
Hello, I’m Priyadarsi and I’m the programme coordinator for the cybersecurity programme at UTS welcome.
Jennifer Parcell 2:32
Thanks Priya. Next up we have Associate Professor Qiang Wu.
Quiang Wu 2:39
Hi, everyone. My name is Qiang Wu, the Associate Professor and currently I’m also coordinator for postgraduate programme internetworking and internetworking always a key part of contributing into master cybersecurity. So working on bow and in question more than happy to answer.
Jennifer Parcell 2:58
Thanks so much. And of course, just to round out our panel of experts. We also have one of our students, Taylor.
Taylor Li 3:06
Everyone, my name is Taylor and I have just finished my master of it as UTS. Excellent.
Jennifer Parcell 3:13
Well, I will now hand over to our panel of experts to talk you through all things cyber security, and in particular, the master of cybersecurity at UTS. So Wayne, I’ll hand over to you.
Wayne Brookes 3:27
Thank you. So just to begin. So, the focus of today’s webinar is our master of cybersecurity. But what we thought we might actually start with is just a little bit of information about why cybersecurity is so very important today. Now, probably many of you are aware of this but let’s just go through a few pieces of information from our perspective about why now is exactly the right time to be studying a course in cybersecurity. So on the screen now, there are some key facts and figures, some of which, again, you might be aware of, but some which may be surprising. Now, this is the Australian landscape of what’s happening in cybersecurity in Australia.
So over the last financial year, there are over 67,500 reports of cybercrime. But what’s generally regarded is that a lot of people don’t even report cyber crime. So if they may have experienced it or been a victim of cyber crime, and they don’t report it. So in fact, the actual incidences of cybercrime are likely to be much higher than even that figure indicates That’s an increase of 13% of crimes reported on the previous financial year. So it’s really a very big issue at the moment. And what’s also concerning that you may not be aware of is that one quarter of those incidents reported, we’re actually affecting Australia’s critical infrastructure. So that’s things like our electricity supply network, our national broadband network. Now I’m not naming specific examples, but the general Roughly speaking, our critical infrastructure is affected and impacted by cybercrime. And that’s a great concern. The majority of reports, though, are actually perhaps individuals who’ve been the victim of online shopping or online scams online banking, spam. But nonetheless, it’s a mixture of corporate and personal cybercrime.
Now, it’s also a very big industry in a growing industry. So within a couple of years, Australia expects to be spending $7.6 billion on cybersecurity each year. And some of that, of course, will be on recruiting staff to work in this industry, which we’ll talk about in a moment, a little bit of a profile about what the cybersecurity companies are like. So a lot of them are actually quite young companies. So a significant number have started within say, the last five years. And really two thirds of them, the majority of them are actually less than 10 years old. So it’s an exciting and it’s a dynamic area to work in, with new companies emerging and coming up all the time. And New South Wales in particular is a great place to be we have the largest and the most diverse range of cybersecurity companies, and providers within Australia for against the right place to be. Now, of course, government and defence are big customers of cybersecurity, partly because of that critical infrastructure need, but also the need to protect citizens information as well. So our government now defence are very large clients. And but again, the largest number of companies are small to medium enterprises need.
So again, in terms of career opportunities, there’s a range of places you could end up working. If you study in cybersecurity from a small startup company, right up to working for government or defence or a very large multinational company. It’s an extremely diverse and extremely exciting place to work. Now, in terms of what the job market might look like, for the future, so the Australian Government established the Australian cybersecurity growth network a few years back, and they produce an annual report. So a couple of years ago, well, just in 2019, they estimated that by 2026, Australia will need 17,000 additional cybersecurity specialists meet the demand of the industry. And they’ve identified the need for more qualified graduates from universities to fulfil some of those very important cybersecurity roles. So again, it’s a very dynamic and exciting area to be in and it’s a growing area, it’s absolutely a growing area. Now, I’m going to hand over to my colleague, Priya, who’s going to take you through the next part of the presentation to talk a little bit more about his perspective as PRI as one of our leading academics in cybersecurity here at UTS.
Priyadarsi Nanda 7:41
Thank you, thank you, Wayne and welcome to this fabulous webinar. And as when mentioned, cyber is everywhere now. Because the way actually we are doing our business particularly from starting from your personal data protection to critical infrastructure to country specific infrastructure. So, so there are a lot of things actually, which governs around the cybersecurity. So, what I’m going to talk about in the next few minutes is how basically the strategies should be developed in terms of managing those cybersecurity research.
So, essentially, in this course, so, what you will learn will help you in acquiring knowledge on various cyber security security problems, starting with different types of attacks the defence mechanism, how to, how to mitigate some of the some of the high risk cybersecurity issues, then you are going to apply your knowledge. So, basically, you will be learning through various subjects. So, naturally the, the knowledge that you will gain, you will be then using those knowledge to to defend various aspects of of cybersecurity. And that is where actually we are going to, you know, give you the best, you know, knowledge in terms of how to manage cybersecurity when you go to the industry. Next slide, please.
Okay, now, in terms of cybersecurity, at UTS. So we have been working in this particular area or this particular learning or research area for the last 20 years. So we have a lot of, you know, subjects around that cybersecurity, starting with the fundamentals of cybersecurity, to going into IoT security, cloud security, you know, there is a variety of subjects which we are offering for the last many, many years. So it’s a dynamic field of study. And as were mentioned, that there are a lot of things to gain from this particular course. And as you see, the demand from the industry demand from the workforce basically is quite high in terms of how they are looking for you Various graduates in the in the cybersecurity field and we are actually in a position to offer you the best, you know, learning experience in terms of how we have designed our code our subjects within the course and also with the help of our industry partners. So, basically through the industry connections, you can we have developed the course in a way to prepare you for the best outcome and to get engaged in the industry and in various kind of problem in the cyber domain. We have many people, many experts actually working in various areas of cybersecurity, including IoT security, cloud security, to regular network security, blockchain and so on.
So, there are many, many fields where our academics are strongly associated in terms of teaching as well as in terms of the research, we have a lot of facilities here at UTS that is dedicated labs to experience or to give the experience of performing various kind of lab exercises through our networking lab through our cybersecurity lab. So, you will definitely learn a lot of things by working through these you know, industry specific equipments, for example, we have this networking lab which is which is basically with a Cisco equipment like the router, the switches the server. So, basically, you know exactly how to configure the router, how to configure the switch, particularly when you are actually working on the on the firewall implementing intrusion detection system. So, you will gain a lot of experience by working through these labs. Similarly, for the Juniper, you are also given the opportunity to have hands on experience in terms of implementing designing and implementing various various kinds of cyber defence strategy. So, that is how actually we can give you the best in terms of the lab.
Now, the master of cybersecurity course, is basically, I’m just going to go through there are two types of you know, courses which are within that cybersecurity course. So, one is master of cybersecurity and other is the master of cybersecurity extension. So, in terms of the duration, as you could see, here, mastery of cybersecurity is 1.5 years or three semester course, full time course. So, basically, you will be working in a range of cybersecurity related problems and gaining experience getting knowledge by by by going to various kinds of subjects in cybersecurity, the master of cybersecurity extension, it will get to expand your knowledge by another one semester by engaging, you have to spend more time in terms of you know, managing various kind of this in depth analysis and so on by selecting also various kinds of subjects, which are, which may be part of the networking or cybersecurity is principally related subjects such as the upon cybersecurity privacy, governance law, you know, there are a lot of subjects what we are going to put into this particular course.
So, as you could see here, the master of cybersecurity programme is 72 credit points. So, considering each subject is six credit points, so, we have you have to do 12 credit points and sorry 12 subjects. So, there are three aspects actually, which are in this master of cybersecurity programme. So, you have core subjects, so, which is, which are core subjects, and you learn about the networking, about the unique system programming cybersecurity fundamentals, risk management, like risk is one of the most important factor in cybersecurity fail. So, naturally you will be learning how to how to manage the risk and develop some right kind of solution. Then in the optional field, you can see that we have subjects around digital forensics, cryptography, security appliances, IoT security, cloud security, cybersecurity for the mobile platform.
So, if you see the number of subjects what we put into the options, it almost covers every aspect of cybersecurity and how you should get knowledge from those those people then the technology research comparison is another project stream so, so basically the knowledge that you acquire from the core subjects as well as from the optimal subjects, so we’ll be very much helpful in terms of performing a project or working in a project. So So there are two parts to this one’s one is called the technology research. To Paris and because the research preparation helps you in terms of understanding how to search for paper, how to search for article How to write the you know the document in a in a paper form, then you have either you have to do a research project or industry project. So, basically that way you are quite efficient in terms of not only getting the theoretical aspect also implementing your knowledge by performing a project research project then the cybersecurity extensor is more on more on two types of majors. So, one is called the networking’s of major which is 24 credit points, you have to choose four subjects or you can choose 24 credit card problems from related subject to cybersecurity for example, privacy and data analytics, AI and those are the subjects which are very much related to the cybersecurity fields.
So, once you have once you have studied the required subjects that is the core subject, the optional subject and the project and other core subjects particularly applied to the cybersecurity extension programme. So, what you could expect from this particular course, is some sort of advanced skills to analyse the risks associated with cybersecurity ability to understand and develop various kinds of strategies to mitigate not only the current cybersecurity problems, but also for the future cybersecurity problems, because nobody knows what the future will look like in this particular cybersecurity field. And it’s an ever changing field. And because the attacks even if we have so many mitigation strategies, whether we’re using machine learning or AI or blockchain or whatever scheme we are using, but we still we are still getting attacks in the in the, in the, in the last couple of years, I mean, see that there is an exponential increase in terms of the number of cyber attacks what is happening, you’ll also gain strong technical as well as management skills, because as we said, just in the previous slide, that you will be learning a lot of subjects to cover your technical skills as well as the management skills.
So definitely that will help you in terms of in terms of getting those skills and to be work ready for the industry. Okay. Now, in terms of the because it is very important to understand actually what role you will be then doing after doing this particular course. So, naturally, naturally, it is worth mentioning at this point of time that by doing this particular master of cybersecurity or master of cybersecurity extension course. So, you may be employed at ICT information and communication technology security specialists, network security analyst, these are just some of the some of the roles what you could you could take up in with the industry, then cyber threat incident management specialists, cyber security engineer, digital forensic investigator, operations security specialist, and so on. So the lists are growing every year. And you could expect a very good opportunity for you to be absorbed in the in the industry working in the cybersecurity field. So as you could see here, again, this is also important to understand like what salaries are, they are in the industry, average salary, we don’t actually specify the specific salary related to specific industry, but average salary, something around this particular data which we have got it from indeed.com. And that was very recent. So you could see here that the security engineer, security analyst so he could see they’re well paid in the industry after being having basically the cybersecurity field.
Wayne Brookes 19:18
Thank you, Priya. Thank you, I might take over again for the next couple of slides. So one of the things you might be also wondering is what is required to get admission into this course. So basically, our Master of cybersecurity course is designed for IT professionals who are looking to further specialise their career. So a typical profile we’re thinking you might be somebody who has a bachelor’s degree already in it or computer science, or a related field. We’re also willing to consider if you’ve got computer engineering, even electrical or electronic engineering or telecommunications. So if you have a degree already in a related field, but maybe you want to work in cybersecurity and you need to specialise a little more, but that’s really what this course is all about. You’ve already got your broad IT background, but it’s time to specialise in cybersecurity.
So that’s the profile for the admission requirements. However, having said that, maybe if you did your bachelor’s degree in another field, but you do have work experience in cybersecurity, or maybe an IT related role where you’re working with security, and you feel that you need to upskill and you need to improve your knowledge of cybersecurity, then if you have a bachelor’s degree in some other field, but you also do have some work experience, then we would also consider you for the course as well. In that case, you’d need to provide us with a CV and some proof of at least two years work experience in a relevant field. But if you already have a bachelor’s degree in it, or computer science, we don’t require any work experience. In that case, you can directly enter into the master of cybersecurity.
Now, I should have said at the beginning of this at UTS, for admission requirements, there’s always two kinds of admission requirements for every course, there’s the academic requirements needed to get admission to the course. And there’s also an English language requirement flow. There’s also an English language requirement here, if your prior study was not in English, and it doesn’t matter, regardless of whether you’re a domestic student or an international student. If your prior study was not in English, then we would ask you to make the English proficiency requirement. And the most common way to do that is by taking an English language test like Isles where we’d look for Isles at 6.5 overall, with a six in the writing score. But we also accept TOEFL Pearson Test etc. So provided you meet the academic requirements for the course and the English language requirements for the course, then we’d love to have you join and learn more about specialising in cybersecurity with us.
So the other thing we should mention, so we’ve been talking about the master’s programme, but the master’s programme actually fits in oops, with other courses that we have at UTS. So, for example, you can start with a graduate certificate if you wish. And so in the case of the master of cybersecurity programme, which is the top row, you could start with either a grad cert in it, if you have a bachelor’s degree already in computing, or it or a grad cert in engineering, if you have a bachelor’s degree in engineering, so you could start with a grad cert, and then you could progress into one of the master programmes. If you want to, you can start off small, 24 credit points is just four subjects at UTS. So you can do four subjects in the grad cert and then choose to progress to the masters. And equally, you can also choose to exit early, so you can enrol in the Masters but, you know, maybe life changes partway through, you can always exit with either a graduate diploma or even a graduate certificate if you’re unable to finish the masters for whatever reason.
Now, what I’ll also mentioned on this slide, if you’ve looked on the UTS website, you might have also seen that we have a graduate certificate in cybersecurity management. So that’s another course that we offer as one of our online only programmes. And it doesn’t lead it leads to a different master’s degree, which is the master of technology management. So that’s the bottom stream on this slide. So we also have the option of completing a graduate certificate in cybersecurity management 100% online study are only for domestic students at the moment, but you could also progress down that management path. So the key difference between the two pathways, the master of cybersecurity is designed more to help you develop your technical skills as well as some of the management as Priya said, whereas the management stream at the bottom focuses mostly on developing management capability and doesn’t have as much technical expertise in cybersecurity included. Now enough from myself, and from Priya, I think you’d like to hear from one of our current students. So you’ve already met him, but I’d like to introduce now Taylor, to say a few words. So Taylor studying a master’s degree with us at UTS. And he’s also a key member of our cybersecurity Student Society. Over to you Taylor.
Taylor Li 24:03
Thank you Dr. Brooks. So my name is Taylor and I have just finished my last semester of my master’s degree. And right now I’m working as a penetration tester or pen tester. Simple reporting is like what normal people call a hacker except that we have a, we attack our clients with their consent and a contract. So yeah, before I came to UTS, I was, I have some experience in development and Linux and system admin, but nothing about security. So I didn’t start like from zero, but UTS prepared me for getting into cybersecurity and I think I’ve found my passion in cybersecurity. So In terms of the subjects that I’ve learned, not only the cybersecurity related subjects that helped me, but also things like lesson routing, and some cloud related subjects, that also helped me because he’s cyber cybersecurity. We do need a wide range of knowledge, not only, for example, your, your clients have a web application, and that application might be hosted hosted on a cloud environment and a cloud, they are developed in many different programming languages, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and it can’t just say, oh, I’m only familiar with Python.
So just don’t look at other language codes. That is not acceptable. So you do need a wide range of knowledge. And actually, any aspect of it knowledge can help you sooner or later. And yeah, I think the greatest help that I have received is from any peer students and luminize. From the cybersecurity side, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I got them from a the orientation week, they have a store and I sign up. So these are a bunch of really helpful and supportive people, just like the cybersecurity industry nowadays, at least from the people I know. And yeah, the society hosts many workshops. And we always eat pizza and gelato soft. While we are still meeting person, of course. So yeah, it’s a great bunch of people. If you’re interested, you can join them as well.
Wayne Brookes 27:03
That’s great. So thanks, Taylor. I just want to remind everybody about the Q&A function that we have. So in the webinar, you should see a Q&A button, a button at the bottom. And if you have any questions specifically for Taylor, you’re very welcome to ask questions of any of us, but including Taylor. So if you want to know more about what it’s like, from the student perspective, please do pop those questions into the q&a. Now as we go, and we’ll get to them towards the end, we’ve got a little bit more to go.
So the next thing I would like to just mention is what the fees are for this course. So there’s different fees depending on whether you do the masters or the extension masters, and whether you’re a domestic student or an international student. So here, we’ve just included an example of the tuition fee, if you are a domestic student starting the course into in 2022. And if you are studying the Master of cybersecurity, so the fee, we state the fee per credit point. And in fact, it’s the same fee per credit points for the extension masters as well. So $750 per credit point. And normally, you would study either 12 or 24 credit points per semester, depending on whether you’re a part time or a full time student. But that’s just an indicative fee, we do have information on the bottom right of the slide with links to our website where you can use our fee search finder, and you can find all the different fees for the different course programmes. I’ll hand back now to Jen to take us through the next bit of the presentation.
Jennifer Parcell 28:30
Thanks, Wayne. Okay, so some key information that you might need is what you need to think about before you apply. So obviously, it’s important that you check the session dates, make sure that you’re going to actually be able to study when session commences the admission requirements, which Wayne has already kindly gone through, but do have a look. And just make sure if there’s any documents, for example, if you need to provide some evidence of your industry experience, that you can do that. And so you’re ready to apply once you’ve submitted the English proficiency Wayne also mentioned, and any required documents might need to be certified. So that’s just something to check before you actually apply.
Now, how do you apply? Obviously, the key piece of information, we have some links here as well as QR code, slightly different for domestic and international students. But essentially, once you set up your account there, you can submit your application. Now, some common questions. We don’t have the answers to everything here. And to be honest, if we were to cover all of the answers to these questions, this would be a far longer webinar. But what we do have here is a slide to hopefully help you out if you’re looking for any more information for any of these related fields.
So, fees, fee. We’ve already mentioned, Wayne’s mentioned, that it is a great idea to go on and have a look. certain subjects will have certain variances as well as your own circumstances, so do have a look at that particular site.
Credit recognition is also a common one. So that’s something you can submit when you apply and it will be assessed case by case as to how close the things you’ve previously studied to what’s in the current course and whether that will be recognised. You can check out the timetable just to see how things might work for you and your circumstances, life obviously, is busy for everyone. So you can have a look at that. And something that we haven’t mentioned is our short courses.
So even if you’d like to do something a little bit smaller than a graduate certificate just to kick off, but do have a look at our short courses website, there’s a mixture of taster courses as well as online or even day courses. So have a look and see if there’s anything there that might get you in the mood to then maybe go further into the graduate certificate and hopefully the masters.
Okay, now we mentioned that we do have the opportunity to ask questions. So now is the time please pop your questions into that Q&A section. And, and we’ll get answering in just a moment. Whilst you put your questions in, we will let you know that we’ve got a few exciting things coming up in the next month or so. We do have some more webinars happening in January. So if perhaps cybersecurity wasn’t maybe what you thought it was going to be, but you’re interested in another area of engineering or it in postgraduate study, then please come along to one of our webinars in January where we will tell you even more about all the other courses that we have to offer. We’re also offering a tour of our wonderful building in Ultimo in Sydney.
So things are opening back up and we’re having people come on campus. So if you’d like to come and have a look at the building, have a look at the facilities, some of those labs that we mentioned earlier in the presentation, as well as meet our academics you can meet Wayne, Priya as well as any other academics for different areas. So come and have a chat have a tour. Have a talk to us before application deadlines close. And that is something I should mention the applications for the next session do close on the 30th of January. So you’ve got just over a month to have a think about it and submit your application. And then study will commence in February next year for the autumn session.
If you have any admissions questions, which obviously is a common thing, then we’ve got a link there to our student admission centre. They are happy to help you with any questions around documents certifications, or eligibility criteria, admission requirements or even simply the process of applying. So that’s a great one to have.
And lastly, we do have the option where you can have a one on one consultation with Priya. He has a number of dates and times available for the rest of the year. So perhaps if you just want to have a conversation with Priya, he’s the course coordinator for this master of cybersecurity. Then you can have a chat talk about maybe what your experience has been or want to find out a bit more about the course and what you’ll learn. Have a chat with Priya bring a cup of tea and answer all your questions that you might have.
I would like to thank our panellists for this evening, our panel of experts; Wayne, Priya,Quiang and Taylor, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been wonderful to hear your experience and get a better understanding of this brand new offering here at UTS in cybersecurity, sounds like it’s a really exciting area it’s ever changing. And it’s certainly a growing area with a lot of career opportunity and prospects moving forward. So all the great things are combined by studying cybersecurity in the future. So thanks, everyone for joining us. Don’t forget to reach out by any of the means on the screen, whether it’s email, social media, or even give us a call or booking for a one on one consultation with Priya I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. We’d love to have a chat with you. So do get in touch if you have any more questions or want any clarification on the course offering. But for now, I think we will let you enjoy the rest of your evening. And hopefully we can see you on campus next year sometime or online in near future. Thank you.