Cybersecurity Polytechnic University of Catalonia

Overview

The goal of the Master in Cybersecurity at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia is to provide graduates solid knowledge in the design, implementation and management of the security in nowadays infrastructures and communications.

This master’s degree has a high professional orientation providing fundamental skills in the cybersecurity field that include: the analysis of systems’ risks and vulnerabilities, the prevention of cyber-attacks and threats, detection and efficient response to cyber-attacks, the fulfilment of existent regulations in the area of data protection, and the design of security and privacy architectures.

Professional opportunities

• Information and communication technologies.
• Computer programming.
• Public administration.
• Security analyst.
• Security risk specialist.
• Security consultant.
• Digital forensic analyst.
• Ethical hacker.
• Security operations centre (SOC) specialist.
• Chief security officer (CSO) in technology companies.
• CSO in non-technological companies that have IT departments.

Competencies

Generic competencies

Generic competencies are the skills that graduates acquire regardless of the specific course or field of study. The generic competencies established by the UPC are capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship, sustainability and social commitment, knowledge of a foreign language (preferably English), teamwork and proper use of information resources.

Specific competencies

• To design applications that have a high added value and are based on information and communication technologies (ICTs) applied to cybersecurity.
• To identify and select the most appropriate tools for detecting and analysing attacks and security incidents according to their nature and the setting in which they occurred.
• To identify and analyse the laws and regulations that apply in matters of cybersecurity and understand the ethical implications of cyber-defence techniques for users’ privacy and how to minimise them.
• To analyse cryptographic key encryption and management protocols according to their robustness from a mathematical perspective.
• To design, implement and operate authentication, authorisation and auditing protocols for information systems such as databases.
• To apply network traffic monitoring and analysis techniques for detecting cybersecurity attacks and investigating incidents.
• To design, develop, detect, analyse and eliminate malicious code that is able to infect and conceal itself within a current operating system.
• To identify and apply techniques for maintaining the security and privacy of distributed applications built on internet protocols. 
• To carry out and present and defend before an examination committee an original, individual piece of work consisting of a cybersecurity engineering project that synthesisesthe competencies acquired on the master’s degree.