Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering program focuses on the fundamental theory and practices for designing, engineering and operating high assurance secure information systems. The program addresses the challenges and problems of sound policy formulation, verifiably secure operating systems, security-aware applications, secure networking, and use of cryptography and key management. This elucidates a foundation of sound principles for mitigation strategies that include advanced persistent threat employing malicious subversion.
Students enrolled in the Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering program will be able to demonstrate understanding of contemporary engineering design principles and associated innovative practices relevant to the notion of threats to an information system and technical and procedural approaches to mitigating the threat, the technical concepts of secure system design and development, and mechanisms for building security services and risk management. Further, they will be able to implement these practices under guidance of Informatics faculty members in preparation for employment in Cyber Security and Information Assurance industries.

Upon completion of the USC Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering degree, students will be able to apply critical principles and practices pertinent to cyber security and information protection in their employment practice. Graduates should be positioned to be extremely competitive in a very high demand sector. They will be well prepared to take on current large-scale security issues which have the potential of wreaking massive damage to the well being, safety, and privacy of the people of our nation.

Our program is committed to leveraging the strongest technology and educational methods in addressing these challenges. In particular, our focus will include trusted systems and standards, and proven verifiable protection of truly trustworthy high assurance security designed to substantially address the problems of adversarial attacks that include software subversion.

The degree is 28 units comprised of 5 required courses (20 units) and 2 elective courses (8 units). For course descriptions, please visit this page. To apply, please visit the this page.