Curriculum | 13 Credit Hours
In this hands-on program, you’ll complete 3 foundational courses — or the “Core” — of the master’s degree curriculum and choose an elective course to begin developing advanced skills in a specific area of information security. This is the curriculum order for this program.
Survey Courses | 3 credit hours
Students select one of the following:
ISE 5101: Security Essentials | SEC401 + GSEC
SANS Course: SEC401: Security Essentials - Network, Endpoint, and Cloud
Certification: GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 5101 is the introductory, technically-oriented survey course in the information security engineering master's program. It establishes the foundations for designing, building, maintaining and assessing security functions at the end-user, network and enterprise levels of an organization. The faculty instruction, readings, lab exercises, and exam are coordinated to introduce and develop the core technical, management, and enterprise-level capabilities that will be developed throughout the information security engineering master's program.
ISE 6215: Advanced Security Essentials | SEC501 + GCED
SANS Course: SEC501: Advanced Security Essentials - Enterprise Defender
Certification: GIAC Certified Enterprise Defender (GCED)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6215 reinforces the theme that prevention is ideal, but detection is a must. Students will learn how to ensure that their organizations constantly improve their security posture to prevent as many attacks as possible. A key focus is on data protection, securing critical information no matter whether it resides on a server, in robust network architectures, or on a portable device.
Despite an organization's best effort at preventing attacks and protecting its critical data, some attacks will still be successful. Therefore students will also learn how to detect attacks in a timely fashion through an in-depth understanding the traffic that flows on networks, scanning for indications of an attack. The course also includes instruction on performing penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, and forensics.
Core Courses | 7 credit hours
ISE 5201: Hacker Tools, Techniques, Exploits, & Incident Handling | SEC504 + GCIH
SANS Course: SEC504: Hacker Tools, Techniques, and Incident Handling
Certification: GIAC Certified Incident Handler Certification (GCIH)
3 Credit Hours
By adopting the viewpoint of a hacker, ISE 5201 provides an in-depth focus into the critical activity of incident handling. Students are taught how to manage intrusions by first looking at the techniques used by attackers to exploit a system. Students learn responses to those techniques, which can be adopted within the framework of the incident handling process to handle attacks in an organized way. The faculty instruction, lab exercises, and exam are coordinated to develop and test a student's ability to utilize the core capabilities required for incident handling.
ISE 5401: Intrusion Detection In-Depth | SEC503 + GCIA
SANS Course: SEC503: Network Monitoring and Threat Detection In-Depth
Certification: GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst Certification (GCIA)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 5401 delivers the technical knowledge, insight, and hands-on training you need to defend your network with confidence. You will learn about the underlying theory of TCP/IP and the most used application protocols, such as DNS and HTTP, so that you can intelligently examine network traffic for signs of an intrusion. You will get plenty of practice learning to master different open source tools like tcpdump, Wireshark, Snort, Bro, tshark, and SiLK. Daily hands-on exercises suitable for all experience levels reinforce the course book material so that you can transfer knowledge to execution.
ISE 6200: Core Comprehensive Exam
1 Credit Hour
The Core Comprehensive Exam tests your mastery of the core technical skills required by top security consultants and individual practitioners. Through a series of exercises, you’ll demonstrate your ability to integrate the knowledge, skills, and techniques acquired in ISE 5101, ISE 5201, and ISE 5401 to address common challenges faced by technical leaders in the cybersecurity field.
Elective Course | 3 credit hours
ISE ___: Technical Elective Course | SANS Class + GIAC Exam
3 Credit Hours
You can choose any 3-credit hour technical course from an approved list of elective courses.
