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Cyber Threat Intelligence & Defense (BS)

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Program Overview

Want to be at the frontier of defending against the biggest 21st-century threat to global humanity? Identity theft, viruses and the infiltration of government and business networks are becoming increasingly common and more severe. Learn to track, analyze and counter these digital security threats with a Cyber Threat Intelligence & Defense bachelor’s degree.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts 37 percent growth of information security analysts from 2012 to 2022 in manufacturing, defense, public administration, healthcare and retail trade industries.

According to Burning Glass Technologies, more than a quarter million cyber security jobs have been posted nationally, which accounts for more than 10 percent of all posted IT jobs. 

In this program, you’ll discover trends and create behavioral profiles of adversary groups to combat attacks against computers and networks in the public and private sector.

You’ll blend physical reconnaissance and defense with modern information technology techniques, including setting up firewalls, scanning for viruses, and routinely checking for breaches in security.

Learn incident response techniques that detect, scope and respond to internal and external intelligence, decreasing cyber-attackers’ likelihood of success with each intrusion attempt.

You’ll also identify, extract, prioritize and leverage intelligence from advanced persistent threat (APT) intrusions; deploy countermeasures; and gauge the performance of planned and installed enterprise-level information security systems.

Cyber Threat Intelligence and Defense lab
Take a tour of where cyber threat and defense students put their learning to work.

This program is available in Providence. Contact Admissions for more info.

Sample Courses

  • Introduction to Cyber Security Operations
  • Assembly Language Programming
  • Software Reverse Engineering
  • Computer & Network Forensics
  • Active Cyber Defense & Countermeasures
  • Wireless Networking

In addition to classes, free elective credit can be applied to a number of options such as Directed Experiential Education (DEE), internship, minor or study abroad. You are encouraged to contact an advisor before scheduling free elective credits.

View a full course listing:

Providence

Career Possibilities

Some professions may require additional study, background checks, certifications, licenses, exams and/or experience as required qualifications for employment. Students are responsible for verifying that they can meet the employment requirements of potential employers.

  • Computer Forensics & Intrusion Analyst
  • Information Systems Security Officer
  • Counterintelligence Analyst
  • Logistics Analyst
  • Cyber Threat Intelligence
  • Security Architect/Administrator

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Assistant Pofessor Brandon Catalan, CCE, CISSP, ACE

Learning the Tools of the Trade

Before joining the College of Engineering & Design as an assistant professor, Brandon Catalan, CCE, CISSP, ACE, spent 10 years working for a Department of Defense contractor managing all cyber espionage operations.

One of the classes he teaches at JWU is Introduction to Operating Systems, which gives students a broad understanding of the functional characteristics of complex operating systems, as well as an introduction to the basic techniques of operating systems design.

Catalan starts students off in a textbook, but quickly moves to hands-on learning that introduces the tools and complexities of the field: “This industry changes every single day. There are new vulnerabilities constantly being discovered, new exploits being created, new project techniques being thought of and the university, just by the infrastructure it has, is already 80% ahead of the game.”

To be successful, students need to be open to new ways of working: “Innovative thinking, out of the box thinking, is critical in a program like this. Being innovative and trying to look at the way things were done in the past, and then trying to predict what’s going to happen in the future, is what helps us come up with a new offensive collection technique that nobody’s even thought of yet.”

Catalan asks each student to write an executive summary as if they were working at a Fortune 500 security operations center — something he had to do frequently when he worked in security operations.

“Senior leadership want to know what’s going on, how does this impact the company, and lastly are there any workarounds in place, how do we mitigate the eventual risk — and that’s what an executive summary does. The students got really into it. We focus on teaching them to capture something that’s technical in nature and write it for someone that might not be technically minded.”

Faculty Contact

Providence

James Sheusi
401-598-2542
Email

As of June 23, 2020, programs in this catalog will no longer be offered to new students at the Denver and North Miami campuses. At the close of the 2020-2021 academic year (subject to possible courses through the summer of 2021), no programs in this catalog will be offered to any students at the Denver and North Miami campuses, as those campuses will be closing after the end of the 2020-2021 academic year (subject to possible courses through the summer of 2021).

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