Networks and Security - MSc

Entry requirements

A first, 2.1 or good 2.2 honours degree (or equivalent) in computing or a related subject.

All applicants are considered on an individual basis and additional qualifications, professional qualifications and relevant experience may also be taken into account when considering applications. 

International students

Please see our International website for entry requirements by country and other relevant information. Due to visa restrictions, international fee-paying students cannot study part-time unless undertaking a distance or blended-learning programme with no on-campus provision.

English language entry requirements

The University requires all non-native speakers of English to reach a minimum standard of proficiency in written and spoken English before beginning a postgraduate degree. Certain subjects require a higher level.

For detailed information see our English language requirements web pages. 

Need help with English?

Please note that if you are required to meet an English language condition, we offer a number of pre-sessional courses in English for Academic Purposes through Kent International Pathways.

Teaching and assessment

Assessment is through a mixture of written examinations and coursework, the relative weights of which vary according to the nature of the module. The final project is assessed by a dissertation.

Programme aims

This programme aims to:

• enhance the career prospects of graduates seeking employment in the computing/IT sector
• prepare you for research and/or professional practice at the forefront of the discipline
• develop an integrated and critically aware understanding of one or more areas of computing/IT and their applications (according to your degree title)
• develop a variety of advanced intellectual and transferable skills
• equip you with the lifelong learning skills necessary to keep abreast of future developments in the field.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

You gain knowledge and understanding of:

• how to engineer software systems that satisfy the needs of customers, using a state-of-the art methodology and an industrially-relevant programming language
• a broad variety of advanced topics relating to computing/IT (the specific topics will depend on the optional modules you chose and may vary from year to year in response to developments in the field, staff changes etc)
• computer networks and communications, including the latest technological developments and applications
• security vulnerabilities of computer systems and networks and the countermeasures used to address them
• the motivation, design, operation and management of modern systems for encryption, authentication and authorisation, including quality of service issues.

Intellectual skills

You develop intellectual skills in:

• the ability to identify, analyse and formulate criteria and specifications appropriate to a given problem
• the ability to model problems and their solutions with an awareness of any tradeoffs involved
• the ability to evaluate systems, processes or methodologies in terms of general quality attributes and possible tradeoffs
• the ability to deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively
• the ability to work with self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems
• the ability to make sound judgements in the absence of complete data
• the ability to review a research paper or technical report critically and to present your findings to a group of peers
• the ability to plan and execute a substantial research or development-based project and to report the work in the form of a dissertation.

Subject-specific skills

You gain subject-specific skills in:

• the ability to specify, design, implement and test computer-based systems
• the ability to deploy effectively the tools used for the construction and documentation of software
• the ability to undertake practical work that explores techniques covered in the programme and to analyse and comment on the findings.

Transferable skills

You gain the following transferable skills:

• the ability to plan, work and study independently and to use relevant resources in a manner that reflects good practice
• the ability to make effective use of general IT facilities, including information retrieval skills
• time management and organisational skills, including the ability to manage your own learning and development
• an appreciation of the importance of continued professional development as part of lifelong learning
• the ability to work effectively as a member of a team
• the ability to communicate technical issues clearly to specialist and nonspecialist audiences
• the ability to present ideas, arguments and results in the form of a well-structured written report
• the ability to act autonomously in planning and implementing tasks at professional or equivalent level.

Fees

The 2020/21 annual tuition fees for this programme are:

Networks and Security - MSc at Canterbury

• Home/EU full-time £8140
• International full-time £19800

Networks and Security with an Industrial Placement - MSc at Canterbury

• Home/EU full-time £8140
• International full-time £19800

For details of when and how to pay fees and charges, please see our Student Finance Guide.

For students continuing on this programme fees will increase year on year by no more than RPI + 3% in each academic year of study except where regulated.* If you are uncertain about your fee status please contact information@kent.ac.uk

Additional costs

General additional costs

Find out more about general additional costs that you may pay when studying at Kent. 

Funding

Search our scholarships finder for possible funding opportunities. You may find it helpful to look at both:

• University and external funds
• Scholarships specific to the academic school delivering this programme.

Research areas

Cyber Security Research Group

Security - of information, systems, and communications - has become a central issue in our society. Interaction between people's personal devices (far beyond just phones and computers) and the rest of the connected world is nearly continuous; and with the advent of the Internet Of Things its scope will only grow.

In that context, so much can go wrong - every communication can potentially be intercepted, modified, or spoofed, and surreptitiously obtained data can be commercially exploited or used for privacy invasions. In fact, data flows in society are such that many people already feel they have lost control over where (their) data goes.

The cyber security research group operates within that context. All members bring a particular technological emphasis - the analysis of particular classes of security problems or their solutions - but are fully aware that it all fits within a wider context of people using systems and communicating data in secure and insecure ways, and how external pressures beyond the mere technology impact on that. The topic of computer security then naturally widens to include topics like privacy, cyber crime, and ethics and law relating to computing, as well as bringing in aspects of psychology, sociology and economics.

From that perspective, the Cyber Security research group played a key role in setting up, and continues to be a core contributor to, the University's Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Research Centre, see www.cybersecurity.kent.ac.uk. 

The group has a strong involvement with postgraduate teaching in this area. It teaches most of the core modules in MSc programmes in Computer Security, and Networks and Security. A new (from September 2017) MSc Course in Cyber Security has been provisionally certified by GCHQ. The group is also involved in undergraduate modules in this area, as well as postgraduate programmes in other schools such as the MSc Information Security and Biometrics, and in UK activities to define curricula in Cyber Security.

Areas of Research Activity

Members are engaged in the following areas of research (research areas in more detail) .

Data Ethics and Privacy

• Identity Management
• Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology
• Human Aspects of Security
• Cloud Security
• Self-Adaptation applied to Security and Privacy
• Tools for Vulnerability Analysis
• Trust Management and Metrics and Reputation Systems
• Steganography and Steganalysis
• Formal Methods for Cryptography
• Quantum Computation and Information, with Security Applications 
• Authentication
• Internet Of Things Security and Privacy
• Cybercrime
• Authorisation Infrastructures

Programming Languages and Systems Group

Our research involves all aspects of programming languages and systems, from fundamental theory to practical implementation. The Group has interests across a wide range of programming paradigms: object-oriented, concurrent, functional and logic. We research the links between logic and programming languages, the verification of the correctness of programs, and develop tools for refactoring, tracing and testing. We are interested in incorporating safe concurrent programming practices into language design.

The Group is also interested in practical implementation of programming languages, from massively concurrent parallel processing to battery-operated mobile systems. Particular research topics include lightweight multi-threading kernels, highly concurrent operating systems, memory managers and garbage collectors.

Research areas include:

• theoretical and architectural questions concerning designs for both hardware and software
• abstractions and implementations of concurrency in programming languages
• formal specification of systems and their architecture
• design patterns and tools for enabling the safe and scalable exploitation of concurrency
• compilers, memory managers and garbage collectors
• lightweight multi-threading kernels and highly concurrent operating systems
• refactoring of functional and concurrent languages
• applications of formal methods to provably correct, secure systems
• model checking and abstract interpretation, including applications to discovering security vulnerabilities
• program verification and theorem proving

Computational Intelligence Group

This Group brings together interdisciplinary researchers investigating the interface between computer science and the domains of bioscience and cognition. In terms of applying computation to other domains, we have experts in investigating the modelling of gene expression and modelling of human attention, emotions and reasoning. From the perspective of applying biological metaphors to computation, we research new computational methods such as genetic algorithms and swarm intelligence.

The Group also develops novel techniques for data mining, visualisation and simulation. These use the results of interdisciplinary research for finding solutions to computationally expensive problems.

The Group has strong links with other schools at the University of Kent, as well as with universities, hospitals and scientific research institutes throughout the country and internationally.

Areas of research activity within the group include:

• bio-inspired computing including neural networks, evolutionary
• computing and swarm intelligence
• application of computational simulations in biology and medicine
• systems biology including gene expression modelling
• theory and application of diagrammatic visualisation methods
• data mining and knowledge discovery
• construction of computational models of the human cognitive and neural system.

Computing Education Group

We focus on disciplinary-specific pedagogy, especially the teaching and learning of computer science and programming.

Our research interests focus on understanding the aspects of learning that are specific to computing education, and which range from examining general theories of learning, through thematically focused investigations (such as gender), to tool construction. We examine education from multiple aspects, including supporting computing education research infrastructure, working with teachers, or focusing on student learning.

Areas of interest include:

• building an evidence base of research on early programming education
• tool support for learning and teaching of programming, including custom-made development tools, such as educational programming languages, or development environments, which can adapt to changes in programming paradigms and technology and pedagogical advances
• analysis of data generated as a part of the learning process, which could be text-based, naturally occurring in the classroom (eg, assessments), generated as a reflective process on learning (eg, diaries), or generated from interaction with programming environments.

Data Science Research Group

Data Science is about developing new techniques to better understand data and draws on many areas within and outside of computer science. Our research group develops and applies methods to interpret rich information sources.Our research comes under three themes:

eHealth

• Dr Caroline Li gathers and analyses EEG data for the study of seasonal affective disorder.
• Dr Srivas Chennu works on neurodynamics of consciousness, developing new tools to study brain networks, including improved diagnostics and prognostics during emergence from coma. He also uses neural network modelling for predictive coding in cognition.
• Professor Ian McLoughlin studies speech signal processing, human hearing, automatic speech recognition as well as deep neural network acoustic models.
• Dr Palani Ramaswamy has worked on biological signal analysis, brain-computer interfaces and biometrics. He has applied machine learning techniques to these and other fields.

Systems

• Dr Fernando Otero, Professor Alex Frietas and  Dr Matteo Migliavacca, have developed new search-based approaches to computation, such as ant colony optimisation methods for predicting protein function.
• Professor Frank Wang has shown that memristors can provide a radically new way to construct neural networks. In addition he has developed models of cloud computing for big data.

Finance

• Dr Michael Kampouridis and Dr Fernando Otero research in the areas of algorithmic trading and financial forecasting. They have worked with different types of data, such as foreign exchange ultra-high frequency data. Algorithms they've used include genetic programming and ant colony optimisation.
• Dr Kampouridis works on the pricing of weather derivatives by using machine learning algorithms.

Staff research interests

Full details of staff research interests can be found on the School's website.

David Barnes : Senior Lecturer

Professor Howard Bowman : Professor of Cognition and Logic

Dr Olaf Chitil : Lecturer

Dr Dominique Chu : Lecturer

Dr Rogerio de Lemos : Senior Lecturer

Professor Sally Fincher : Professor of Computing Education

Professor Alex Freitas : Professor of Computational Intelligence

Dr Stefan Kahrs : Lecturer

Michael Kampouridis : Lecturer

Dr Andy King : Reader in Program Analysis

Dr Caroline Li : Lecturer

Fernando Otero : Lecturer

Dr Peter Rodgers : Reader

Gerald Tripp : Lecturer

Ian Utting : Senior Lecturer

Professor Frank Wang : Professor of Future Computing

Dr Laura Bocchi : Lecturer

Dr Marek Grzes : Lecturer

Dr Matteo Migliavacca : Lecturer

Dr Palaniappan Ramaswamy : Reader, Admissions Officer (Medway)

Dr Mark Batty : Senior Lecturer

Professor Julio Hernandez-Castro : Professor of Computing

Dr Anna Jordanous : Lecturer

Dr Carlos Perez-Delgado : Lecturer

Careers

Our programmes of study are designed to equip our graduates with the skills and knowledge that make them highly attractive to potential employers, providing a good balance between theoretical studies and real-life applications. The recent REF indicated that the School's research was in the top quartile of 89 Computing departments across the UK. Our graduates therefore benefit from a first-rate academic experience as well as being prepared to face the demands of the economic environment. 

Graduate destinations

Our graduates have gone on to work in:

• software engineering
• mobile applications development
• systems analysis
• consultancy
• networking
• web design and e-commerce
• finance and insurance
• commerce
• engineering
• education
• government
• healthcare. 

Recent graduates have gone on to develop successful careers at leading companies such as:

• BAE Systems
• Cisco 
• IBM
• The Walt Disney Company
• Citigroup 
• BT.

Help finding a job

The University has a friendly Careers and Employability Service, which can give you advice on how to:

• apply for jobs
• write a good CV
• perform well in interviews.

The School has a dedicated Employability Coordinator who is a useful contact for all student employability queries.

Industrial placements

You can gain practical work experience as part of your degree through our industrial placements scheme  - we have a dedicated Placement Team who can give advice and guidance.  All our placements are in paid roles.

In previous years, students have worked at a wide range of large and small organisations, including well-known names such as:

• Accenture
• BT
• GSK
• IBM
• Kent Police
• Microsoft
• Morgan Stanley
• The Walt Disney Company

You can take your work placement abroad. Previous destinations include Hong Kong and the USA.

An industrial placement gives you invaluable workplace experience, which greatly enhances your employment prospects and also helps put your academic learning into a real-world context.

Study support

While studying on a taught Master’s, you can gain work experience. We have strong links with industry including Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle and are among the top ten in the UK for graduate employment prospects.

Postgraduate resources

The School of Computing has a large range of equipment providing both UNIX (TM) and PC-based systems and a cluster facility consisting of 30 Linux-based PCs for parallel computation. New resources include a multi-core enterprise server with 128 hardware threads and a virtual machine server that supports computer security experiments.

All students benefit from a well-stocked library, giving access to e-books and online journals as well as books, and a high bandwidth internet gateway. The School and its research groups hold a series of regular seminars presented by staff as well as by visiting speakers and our students are welcome to attend.

The School of Computing has recently built a makerspace on the Canterbury campus, which offers exciting new teaching and collaboration opportunities. Among other equipment, it contains milling machines, a 3D printer, laser cutter and extensive space for building and making digital artefacts.

Our taught postgraduate students enjoy a high level of access to academic staff and have their own dedicated laboratory and study room. Students whose course includes an industrial placement are supported by a dedicated team which helps them gain a suitable position and provides support throughout the placement.

Dynamic publishing culture

Staff and research students publish regularly and widely in journals, conference proceedings and books. Among others, they have recently contributed to: Journal of Artificial Evolution and Applications; International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking; Journal of Visual Languages and Computing; Journal in Computer Virology.

Links with industry

Strong links with industry underpin all our work, notably with Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Agilent Technologies, Erlang Solutions, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Ericsson and Nexor.

The Kent IT Consultancy

The Kent IT Consultancy provides School of Computing students with consultancy experience while studying. KITC provides a project-based consulting service to small businesses in Kent. Its wide variety of services range from e-commerce solutions and network support contracts to substantial software development projects.

Global Skills Award

All students registered for a taught Master's programme are eligible to apply for a place on our Global Skills Award Programme. The programme is designed to broaden your understanding of global issues and current affairs as well as to develop personal skills which will enhance your employability.