Professionals based in industry who have interest in cybersecurity. The micro credential will prepare professionals for a rewarding career; for example, to take a role as a security manager, security engineer, security analyst, or IT security specialist.
Ethical Hacking
Overview
| Module Code | COMP47860 |
| Module Title | Ethical Hacking |
| Subject Area | Cybersecurity |
| Credits | 5 |
| NFQ | 9 |
| EFQ | 7 |
| Start Date | 20 January 2025 |
| Duration | 12 Weeks |
| Time | Synchronous |
| Mode of Delivery | Blended |
| Course Leader | Assoc Professor Mark Scanlon |
| Fee | Full Fee:€875 *Subsidised Fee:€175 *80% Learner Fee Subsidy for eligible learners (Please see below) |
| Application Deadline | 12th January 2025 |
Applications continue to be leveraged as a means of attack into organisations and even individual stakeholders. As an asset to organisations it is fundamental that a mature application security program is in place to protect against threats. In this micro credential , students will gain an deep understanding of application security from threats to the vulnerabilities that open up an application to threats, how a vulnerability can be leveraged to perform an exploit and finally countermeasures in preventing or safeguarding against threats to mitigate risk. Learners will be faced with a number of real world challenges while remaining inside an ethical sphere.
On successful completion of this micro-credential:
- You should have a strong understanding of ethics, the hacker mindset and the motivation of whitehat and black hat hackers.
- You should have a strong understanding of the top industry threats.
- You should have a strong understanding of security assessment techniques.
- Be able to demonstrate industry utilised hacking tools.
- You should be able to articulate risk appropriately.
- You should be able to demonstrate impact of vulnerabilities through POCs.
- You should be able to demonstrate industry best practice mitigations
The micro-credential content will cover:
- Introduction to Ethical Hacking
Industry Threats - Measuring Risk (Common Vulnerability Scoring System)
- SQL Injection
- Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
- Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- Broken Authentication
- Broken Authorisation
- Bad Cryptography
- Current Trends
This holistic and well-rounded course will be of interest to executives and professional/technical staff who:
- need to acquire knowledge and skills to equip themselves better for their current role.
- want to gain a promotion.
- want to open up new career opportunities for themselves in cyber security related roles.
- are interested in doing some research in this field, perhaps in relation to a current work problem.
- want to gain a qualification to add to their standing and credibility within their professional life.
Pre-recorded lectures released every week with 3 in-person workshops at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the term
Minimum of 2.1 honours bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or a cognate discipline) or 2:2 honours bachelor’s degree in computer science (or a cognate discipline) and equivalent (> 5 years) industrial experience in software development or software/system security.
Each applicant will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.Applicants whose first language is not English must also demonstrate English language proficiency of IELTS 7.0 (no band less than 6.5 in each element), or equivalent.
The form of assessment includes an individual project on a practical hacking problem and an open book online MCQ.
Individual feedback will be provided for graded assignments.
- Leadership in Security COMP47800
- Applied Cryptography COMP47890
- Risk Assessment and Standards COMP47900
- Secure Software Engineering COMP47910
- Information Security COMP47920
- Cybersecurity Law LAW42160
- Incident Response COMP47870
- Network Security COMP47880
- Malware Analysis COMP47810
- Ethical Hacking COMP47860
Please note: Learners can avail of only one form of funding per application.
Micro-Credentials Learner Fee Subsidy-Human Capital Initiative Pillar 3
The HCI Pillar 3 Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy has been introduced to enable more learners to address critical skills gaps and engage with lifelong learning through micro-credentials. The HCI Pillar 3 Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy is funded by Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.
HCI Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidies are available on identified micro-credentials only and in fixed numbers from March 2024 until October 2025.
Please see Eligibility Criteria for further information.
If you have any questions about this micro-credential, or would like to speak to a UCD staff member, please contact (opens in a new window)microcredentials@ucd.ie.