MSc Security Technologies and Applications

Entry standards

Candidates should have a first degree in computing or cognate discipline from a UK university or the international equivalent. They should have obtained the degree at Upper Second level or higher. In exceptional circumstances, work experience may also be considered if the candidate has achieved less than Upper Second.

English language requirements

Non-native speakers of English will normally be required to have IELTS 6.5 or above, with a minimum of 6.0 in each component (or equivalent).

Please note that the University of Surrey offers English language programmes and is also an IELTS Test Centre.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - structure and modules

Module Titles

Compulsory modules

• Network Technologies and Security
• Information Security Management
• Introduction to Multimedia Security
• Technologies and Applications
• Security and Cryptography
• Advanced Multimedia Security
• Web Hacking Countermeasures

Optional Modules

• Project Management and Business Strategy
• Cloud Computing 

In addition, one of the options can be taken from a range of modules from the other computing programmes.

Compulsory Modules

Network Technologies and Security

This module aims to equip you with both a theoretical and a practical systematic understanding of the technologies and security challenges for communication networks, embracing Internet, mobile and satellite communications. You will be presented with real-life problems accompanied by practical and applied solutions.

Information Security Management

Security is one of the greatest challenges for computer and information systems in the near future. Information security is a managerial problem as well as a technical one, and good security solutions depend on an ability to identify security requirements based on business needs and business processes. Thus, this module has a two-fold objective. It will look at how information systems can be managed and designed to fill actual business needs. It will also raise an awareness of the great range of security threats and how protection depends on a holistic view of the system.

Introduction to Multimedia Security

This module will provide an introductory background to various digital security technologies currently used in different applications for multimedia content and documents. The knowledge gained in this module will also serve as a prerequisite for students to attend the more advanced modules in security technologies and applications.

Technologies and Applications

In this module, a series of guest lecturers from industry give different perspectives on security challenges and solutions in their respective businesses, and of applications of security technologies in an industrial setting. Through a group project, you will explore a topic of your choice, setting material from other modules in an industrial context.

Security and Cryptography

The aim of this module is to introduce the theoretical principles of private key and public key cryptography, and modelling and analysis techniques for security protocols that use cryptography.

Advanced Multimedia Security

The course follows on the introduction to multimedia security, focusing on current topics in the area. Specifically, this module covers the twin subjects of steganography and steganalysis. The developing field of image forensics is also introduced, in comparison with methodologies used in steganalysis. This course assumes a basic working knowledge of calculus and statistics, introducing tools from signal and image processing, information and coding theory, and other subjects as needed. Experiments on real images demonstrate the techniques used.

Web Hacking Countermeasures

During the last 15 years, web technologies have considerably changed the way we view and use computer systems. The open access nature makes web-based systems harder to keep secure than traditional systems. This new module, being delivered for the first time in 2009/10, will build on autumn modules in Computer Security and in Enterprise Systems Development and look at concrete security problems in web-based systems.

Optional Modules

Project Management and Business Strategy

Management is a pervasive, but frequently misunderstood, concept concerned with achieving satisfactory results in continually changing circumstances, particularly within organisations and involving people. Strategy is an important, but not always obvious, element in this activity. You will be better equipped for their life’s work, both in IT and beyond, if they have a basic understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of good management, together with the strengths and limitations of the strategic planning and implementation process.

Cloud Computing

This module provides an understanding of how, and why, cloud computing is quickly becoming a strategically important consideration for future industrial and research activities.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - entry standards

Entry standards

Candidates should have a first degree in computing or cognate discipline from a UK university or the international equivalent. They should have obtained the degree at Upper Second level or higher. In exceptional circumstances, work experience may also be considered if the candidate has achieved less than Upper Second.

English language requirements

Non-native speakers of English will normally be required to have IELTS 6.5 or above, with a minimum of 6.0 in each component (or equivalent).

Please note that the University of Surrey offers English language programmes and is also an IELTS Test Centre.

Planned intake

20

Start date

September

Programme director

• Dr Johann A Briffa

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - fees and funding

Fees

Security Technologies and Applications (full time):

UK/EU - £6,400 
Overseas - £14,440

www.surrey.ac.uk/pgfees/2012

Prizes

Industry Sponsors and Prizes

The Department benefits greatly from strong links with industry, and our industry partners support the programme in various ways; some with guest lectures and some with prizes for the best student performance (typically £150-200 per prize).

Scholarships

The Department pays a scholarship of £1000 to students with a First class honours degree or equivalent, who do not receive any other scholarship or bursary from the University. Please see the Department web pages for the full conditions.

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MSc Security Technologies and Applications - professional context

Professional recognition

Professional Recognition

The programme is accredited by The British Computer Society (BCS) and counts towards Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status. It is also partially recognised toward CSci and CEng.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - teaching

Teaching

Teaching

Taught Masters programmes in the Department of Computing utilise our research-active staff in conjunction with state-of-the-art facilities. We provide a range of learning experiences including lectures, tutorials, directed study, practical laboratories and project work that prepare graduates for their professional life.

We are particularly keen to develop, in all our students, a broad range of generic skills to complement the core technical or scientific competencies of their chosen subject area. Our modular programme format, coupled with the increasing use of innovative teaching and learning strategies such as e-learning and industrially focused short courses, provides a flexible study environment whilst maintaining academic rigour and quality.

Our record of graduate employment is outstanding, with Surrey graduates consistently being in high demand across all sectors.

Staff perspective

Johann Briffa

As Programme Director for our MSc in Security Technologies and Applications, I am responsible for coordinating and updating its programme of studies. This programme prepares students for research or industry work in the rapidly changing field of computer and information security.

A unique complement of taught modules covers various aspects, including web application security, cryptography, and multimedia security. These provide our graduates with a deep and comprehensive appreciation of current security issues and solutions.

It is very satisfying to see that a number of recent graduates of this programme have successfully secured security-related jobs in industry. Other graduates have followed their own interest in research as PhD students, continuing on the work they did for their MSc dissertation.

My background is in coding theory and multimedia security, with a PhD in 2003 from Oakland University, Michigan. My current research is in error control coding for the insertion/deletion channel and its application to watermarking and steganography. I also supervise PhD students working on image forensics and on the security and privacy aspects of mobile phone payment systems.

I also teach the Advanced Multimedia Security module, which is a compulsory module of the Security Technologies and Applications MSc programme.

This covers current topics in multimedia security, with practical labs and a high level of student interaction.

The MSc programme in Security Technologies and Applications offers exciting career opportunities for prospective students planning to join a very dynamic and cutting-edge field.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - learning

Dissertation and Projects

Dissertation Project

The MSc dissertation project makes up one third of the degree programme, starting at the end of the first semester and completing at the end of the summer. During the project, you are supervised by a member of  academic staff to advise and guide them to completion. At the end of the project you must submit your bound dissertation, which forms a complete record of the project, which is then held in the University Library.

The project focuses in depth on a subject at the leading edge of computing. For example, projects can undertake the development of a software system to solve a particular problem, possibly in collaboration with an industrial partner.

Alternatively, projects can be research-based, in which case an aspect of computing is investigated, perhaps to evaluate particular techniques or propose a new algorithm. These projects are usually closely linked to the Department’s research strengths.

Whatever the topic, you are expected to develop a critical understanding of the methods and technologies needed, then implement and evaluate your chosen solution to a professional standard. Project planning and time management is an important part of the experience.

Project Examples

David Lundin – E-voting Project 

Elections across the globe have become high-profile events, not least because of their controversy, such as the American presidential election of 2000. One way in which elections can be made more reliable is through the use of electronic voting systems, which can provide security and verifiability.

Some electronic voting systems, such as Prêt à Voter and Punchscan, use a pre-printed paper ballot form, part of which is destroyed to create an encrypted receipt of the vote. The voter can use this receipt to check online that his or her vote has been included in the tally, but as the receipt is encrypted it cannot be used to prove which candidate the vote is for. The problem with these ballot forms is that anyone who can see them before they are used has sufficient knowledge to check the contents of an encrypted receipt without it having to be properly decrypted.

In David’s MSc project he developed a method based on visual encryption of the candidate list that hides the content of the ballot form until the moment when it is used by the voter in the voting booth. When the top layer, printed on the ballot form, is properly aligned over the bottom layer, displayed on a computer screen, the candidate list appears in plain text. When the form is removed from the screen the content of the form is once again hidden.

Ian Golledge – Identifying and Classifying Electronic Spam

The project presents a prototype model for implementing a self-organising map as a spam filter. A method is shown where emails are converted into feature vectors, where features represent keywords. Keywords are selected from an analysis of an email corpus with the results ranked based on word frequency measurements. The project describes phases of design which attempt to improve on feature selection and conclude on a prototype model for spam filtering using the self-organising map.

This prototype model is evaluated over six datasets of fluctuating ratios of ham and spam, with testing designed to emulate the incremental re-training of a personalised spam filter. The results are compared to common techniques in spam filtering. Initial results show the model can outperform popular Naive Bayesian techniques. The feature vector representation is then further developed and the model shows results that compare strongly against other classifiers identified in research demonstrating effective application of self-organising map for spam filtering.

The work was published at an international IEEEsponsored conference in Italy:

Vrusias, B. & Golledge I. (2008). Adaptable text filters and unsupervised neural classifiers for spam detection”, Advances in Soft Computing, 53, 195-202.

Aaron Randall – Authentication and Self-Restoration of Watermarked Images

In an age where digital media use is prolific, accessible and cost-effective, the requirement for digital images to be used in such situations as evidence in court, medical imaging, traffic enforcement and forensics is increasingly important.

However, along with digital media use, many different techniques to alter media files digitally have been developed – some with very realistic results. The ramifications of using potentially tampered digital media as evidence in court, for example, could cause the difference between an innocent or guilty verdict. This is an issue that digital watermark authentication and restoration attempts to answer.

Aaron’s MSc project was to develop an image authentication and restoration system capable of localising manipulated regions of an image. Through iterative restoration techniques and the extraction of hidden data from the image itself, he would then attempt to restore damaged regions. The first step of authentication highlighted any regions of the image that the application believed to have been tampered with in some way (such as cropping, blurring or other image manipulation techniques). The restoration stage then looked at fixing the regions highlighted as tampered. This step extracted hidden data from the image and inserted it back into the relevant damaged regions.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - graduate profile

Student Profile: Asiah Mohd Azhar

MSc Security Technologies and Applications

Having completed my BSc, my motivation for wanting to study for an MSc was to build on what I had learned during my undergraduate degree. I chose the MSc in Security Technologies and Applications at the University of Surrey because it required me to bring together a variety of my undergraduate subjects, applying them to new areas. 

The University of Surrey attracted me because of its facilities, which are equipped with advanced technologies, and the University is well known for its support. It was quite a challenge to adapt to the lifestyle here, especially the weather, but with friendly people on campus, I had help to fit in well along the way. 

When I complete the MSc, my aspiration is to become a computer forensic scientist, which is a new area with limited numbers of experts. With the completion of my MSc, I hope to be able to develop intelligent systems or integrate artificial intelligence in developing information systems for computer forensics, whether in the public or private sector.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - more

Our Department

The Department of Computing is an active department within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. There are 17 full-time academic staff and around 400 students at all levels - from undergraduate through to PhD. The Department is proud of its friendly reputation and aims to provide a supportive environment for students.

The Computing degree programmes at the University of Surrey and the all-round student experience is highly rated in the National Student Survey and league table results. The undergraduate and MSc degree programmes are stimulating and challenging with a high level of practical content. The Department is constantly exploring the use of new technology in teaching - such as podcasts and voting handsets - to support greater interactivity, accessibility and enjoyment of lectures. They also organise extra-curricular activity for those who want to explore other aspects of computing in more depth, while supporting local schools and colleges to bring some of the exciting aspects of computing to school pupils.

The Department's research interests are many and varied - ranging across the research groups of Digital Ecosystems; Formal Methods and Security; Multimedia Security and Forensics; and Nature Inspired Computing and Engineering. With a strong research culture and a growing research profile, the Department of Computing have won several prizes - including the University Voting Systems Competition System Design award in 2007 and the prestigious Institution of Engineering and Technology Innovation in Engineering Security award in 2006.

Our Degree Programmes

The Department offers four MSc programmes. Each with its own distinct focus, all of them offer a taste of the Department’s specialisms.

Internet Computing, Security Technologies and Applications, and Computational Intelligence and Computational Biology, are technical degrees requiring a solid background in computing or a cognate discipline.

The MSc in Information Systems is more of a generalist degree, accepting students from a wider range of backgrounds. It takes a more high-level, overall view on information technologies, and prepares students for managerial roles rather than technical roles in their future careers. It covers business and management topics as well as technical computing subjects.

The MSc in Security Technologies and Applications is specialized towards the Department’s multiple activities in relation to the technologies and principles that underlie a variety of information security techniques and technologies.

The MSc in Internet Computing is concerned with distributed information and computing resources, and builds from the Department’s activities relating to the Web and the Cloud.

The programme also has a strong element of more general, technical computer science and software development skills.

The MSc in Computational Intelligence and Computational Biology is the latest addition to the portfolio of programmes following the appointment of a Professor of Computational Intelligence and subsequent growth of a nature-inspired computing theme in the Department.

All of the programmes benefit from the strong research community and the industrial partnerships of the Department. In particular, the dissertation project allows students to work on a topic in one of the key research areas. Even though the programmes share many modules, each has its own focus and direction.

Regardless of which programme you choose, we are committed to making your year at Surrey a valuable and enjoyable experience.

MSc Security Technologies and Applications - apply

• MSc Security Technologies and Applications - Full-time - starting Sep 2012