Cyber Security (MSc)

Award
Master of Science
Typical Offer
2:1 degree View full entry requirements
Duration
1 year
Course Type
Full-time
Campus
Highfield
Next course starts
September 2025

About this course

Improve your understanding of cyber security on this master’s degree at the University of Southampton. This course is one of only 25 MSc Cyber Security programmes in the UK to be awarded a full certification against the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Certified Master’s standard.

We’re recognised as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research by the UK government, and our academics have helped establish a European Data Science Academy.

Cyber security is critically important to commercial and academic organisations, as well as to governments and the public. There is currently a global shortage of experts in this field, and demand for their skills is growing significantly.

Our master's in cyber security offers a multi-disciplinary approach, covering both technical and non-technical subjects, to give you a well-rounded collection of skills that will make you attractive to future employers. Our researchers draw on their own research to offer modules on topics such as:

  • network and web-based security
  • software security
  • cryptography
  • criminology
  • risk management
  • machine learning

We’ll give you access to specialist project labs, computer workstations, and online tools to support your learning in an ideal environment. Our researchers will equip you to handle new and unique challenges in a variety of cyber security fields. At the end of the course, you’ll be able to design, build, analyse and problem-solve in many areas relating to cyber security.

We regularly review our courses to ensure and improve quality. This course may be revised as a result of this. Any revision will be balanced against the requirement that the student should receive the educational service expected. Find out why, when, and how we might make changes.

Our courses are regulated in England by the Office for Students (OfS).

Course lead

Your course leader has research interests in distributed and ubiquitous computing, semantics of programming languages, and models of computation. Visit Dr Julian Rathke’s staff profile to learn more about his work.

Course location

This course is based at Highfield.

Awarding body

This qualification is awarded by the University of Southampton.

Download the Course Description Document

The Course Description Document details your course overview, your course structure and how your course is taught and assessed.