Joint programme description

Students graduating from the Joint Master’s Programme will be awarded a Joint Diploma Master in International Cybersecurity and Cyberintelligence according to the regulations governing the degree-awarding institution which in this case is the coordinating university.

All graduates receive a Joint Transcript of Records and a Joint Diploma Supplement, in accordance with the model developed by the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – European Centre for Higher Education (CEPES). As the coordinating university, University of Granada prepares and issues these documents.

The students will be organised in a cohort that will jointly move around the four universities in the master consortium. This way, they will stay:

• at the University of Padova for the first semester (face-to-face classes), and extra classes for a single course taught from University of Minho.
• at Vilnius university for the second semester (face-to-face classes);
• at University of Granada for the third semester.
• Finally, the fourth semester will be dedicated to master’s Thesis (with remote or local tutoring, as preferred by students), ending with the graduation week to be held face-to-face at the University of Minho.

The curriculum is structured into four semesters, for a total of 12 mandatory classes and 4 optional classes to be chosen among 12.

The core of the curriculum consists of the following mandatory classes:

1. Fundamentals of cryptography (I semester, Padova)
2. Digital Forensics (I semester, Padova)
3. Secure software development (I semester, Padova)
4. Fundamentals on international cybersecurity (I semester, Minho)
5. Operating systems security (II semester, Vilnius)
6. Security of applications (II semester, Vilnius)
7. International management of cybersecurity (II semester, Vilnius)
8. Research projects (II semester, Vilnius)
9. Ethical hacking (III semester, Granada)
10. Cyberprotection systems (III semester, Granada)
11. Network security (III semester, Granada)
12. International cyberintelligence (III semester, Granada)

The students will then choose one class among the following electives in the I semester (Padova):

1. Mobile security
2. Cyberphysical and IoT security
3. Machine Learning techniques for event correlation
4. Formal methods for cyberphysical systems
5. Quantum cryptography and security
6. Privacy preserving information access
7. Law and data

one among the following electives in the II semester (Vilnius):

1. Malware
2. Rapid reaction and first response

and finally, two classes among the electives in the III semester (Granada):

1. International cooperation in cyberspace
2. Cyberwarfare
3. Post-quantum cryptography

The IV semester will be mainly devoted to the thesis work, and writing. It can be spent by the students as an internship either in a company, or in a research institution.

The programme conclusion will be held at University of Minho with the thesis defence by all students which will be preceded by a practical exercise.

In addition to this, as an academic programme, our master seeks to be agnostic, prioritising training in open-source tools and platforms. The following table includes the platforms and tools used, highlighting those that are used more intensively.

The assessment strategies are presented in all course syllabuses. Lecturers also present the assessment strategies during their first semester lectures and remind the exam assessment strategy during the first lecture. All subjects except the final thesis and the professional practice have an accumulative assessment. Each assessment strategy is worth a particular number of points in the final evaluation. This assessment policy makes students feel relatively confident and less stressed. The Virtual Learning Environment and online teaching resources that provide technical environments developed by individual university partners enable feedback from the mid-term tasks. The feedback can be provided for each task and each student.

After completing all the courses offered by partner universities and defending the final thesis, students will receive a joint diploma, which will be issued by Granada University.