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Honours Bachelor of Information Sciences – Cyber Security Online
Enhance your career-ready computer science and security capabilities in our groundbreaking cyber security program.
Program Overview
Earn your cyber security bachelor’s degree online
Stand out in the job market with the knowledge and capabilities you need to succeed in the rapidly growing field of cyber security. The first cyber security degree in Canada, Sheridan College’s Honours Bachelor of Information Sciences – Cyber Security online program imparts knowledge about ethical hacking and penetration testing techniques, legislation and the latest tools in a learning environment led by professionals with industry experience. Enhance your career marketability with industry certifications in a program designed for working adults, allowing you to balance work and other commitments. Plus, your previous credentials and related experience may count as credit to help you finish this program more conveniently.
Internship and applied research opportunities
At Sheridan, we believe the best way to learn is through hands-on experience. In the second half of the program you can work for our industry partners through an internship work-term. Students who have already obtained more than 420 hours of program-related work experience can apply to have that previous experience applied to the internship credit during their studies. You can also sharpen your research skills by providing computer science support to any of Sheridan's various applied research projects.
As a graduate of this cyber security program, you will gain knowledge and capabilities in:
- Computer security
- Database security
- Ethical hacking
- IS intrusion detection and prevention
- Network security
- Computer security
- Database security
- Ethical hacking
- IS intrusion detection and prevention
- Network security
Also available online:
At Sheridan, we offer a variety of innovative online programs that can help you advance. Explore other undergraduate programs.
Tuition
An affordable bachelor's in cyber security program
When you earn your cyber security bachelor’s online, you’re investing in your future.
Program | Per Program |
---|---|
Honours BIS – Cyber Security | $25,624 |
*Tuition does not include additional fees and tuition fees may vary depending on your status as full time or part time. Click here for more information on our additional fees.
Tuition breakdown:
Calendar
Keep track of this program’s important dates
Sheridan College online programs are delivered in an accelerated online format ideal for flexibility and convenience. We offer multiple start dates per year, so you can select the one that suits your schedule.
Term | Start Date | App Deadline | Document Deadline | Registration Deadline | Tuition Deadline | Class End Date | Term Length |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Winter A | 2025/01/06 | 2024/12/13 | 2024/12/13 | 2025/01/06 | 2025/01/31 | 2025/02/21 | 7 weeks |
Winter B | 2025/03/03 | 2025/02/25 | 2025/02/25 | 2025/03/03 | 2025/03/31 | 2025/04/17 | 7 weeks |
Spring/Summer A | 2025/05/05 | 2025/04/29 | 2025/04/29 | 2025/05/05 | 2025/05/31 | 2025/06/20 | 7 weeks |
Spring/Summer B | 2025/06/30 | 2025/06/24 | 2025/06/24 | 2025/06/30 | 2025/07/31 | 2025/08/15 | 7 weeks |
Ready To Take the Next Step?
Admissions
Application to this online program is streamlined
Review the streamlined admission process below for the online cyber security bachelor's degree program from Sheridan College.
Admission Requirements:
- Ontario Secondary School Diploma or equivalent
- Complete an online application
You must meet the following requirements for admission to this Honours Bachelor of Information Sciences – Cyber Security online program.
- Ontario Secondary School Diploma or equivalent, including these required courses:
- English, Grade 12 (ENG4U)
PLUS
- Any Grade 12 science (U or M) or Grade 12 Computer Science (U) or Grade 12 Computer Engineering Technology (U or M)
- Any Grade 12 mathematics (U)
- Three other Grade 12 credits (U or M)
- Minimum 65% overall average
OR
- Two semesters of postsecondary education including required courses with a minimum 65% overall average
Courses
A look at the cyber security Bachelor of Information Sciences curriculum
To graduate from the Honours Bachelor of Information Sciences – Cyber Security program, you must complete a total of 144 credit hours, including 117 core credit hours, six credit hours of professional electives and 21 credit hours from breadth electives.
Learning outcomes:
- Provide guidance to senior management in the design of an information security system
- Evaluate the common approaches to information security system procedures
- Use the components of an information security system assessment appropriately
- Apply the main processes of an information security system to support the business case
- Analyze processes which negatively impact the business information system
- Analyze corporate information security policies and procedures
- Evaluate corporate information security policies and procedures
- Conduct an information security system assessment using an information security systems methodology
- Present applied information security system issues in a concise way to multi-level groups
- Exemplify generally accepted professional standards including honest and ethical conduct, organized in the planning, execution and validation of work, punctuality with regard to the delivery of work, a willingness to approach problems from several perspectives, a willingness to accept direction and an understanding of the limits of their knowledge
Learning outcomes:
- Solve problems involving set operations, relations and functions
- Perform operations with sequences and series
- Perform mathematical induction to prove basic problems
- Recognize and use the process of recursion and solve recurrence relations
- Apply principles of mathematical induction to verify a variety of statements in finite mathematics
- Solve problems in which the number of possibilities is finite using basic counting techniques, permutations and combinations
- Apply the theory of discrete probability to various disciplines
- Apply the concepts of introductory graph theory to specific problems
- Solve various problems in tree theory
Learning outcomes:
- Identify the advantages of packet switching in digital networks over circuit switching
- Compare analog and digital signals, different transmission media, multiplexing techniques and determine where each is best used
- Explain the functions of different LAN components and locate where each component fits in a network
- Identify security issues and dangers inherent in data communication networks
- Calculate data rates in bits per second for different types of data
- Troubleshoot basic network problems using a packet analyzer
- Analyze packet contents using a packet analyzer
- Protect a computer system by configuring a personal firewall
- Select the appropriate transmission media to build a network
- Select the right networking devices to build a LAN
- Exemplify generally accepted professional standards including: honest and ethical conduct organized in the planning execution and validation of work, punctuality with regard to the delivery of work, a willingness to approach problems from several perspectives, a willingness to accept direction, an understanding of the limits of their knowledge and the consequences of this
Learning outcomes:
- Demonstrate understanding of the basic structure and functionality of the LINUX operating system
- Demonstrate use of LINUX utilities
- Evaluate and assess how LINUX manages files, directories and processes
- Analyze the information about the user environment
- Evaluate the information about other users in the multiuser LINUX based systems
- Implement customization of individual user environments
- Demonstrate proficiency in use of LINUX command-line utilities
- Demonstrate proficiency in redirection, pipes and filters to make commands more efficient
- Assess, analyze and manage LINUX processes
- Assess the differences between major popular shells and their scripting languages
- Demonstrate proficiency in writing, running and debugging shell scripts
Learning outcomes:
- Recognize, analyze and evaluate the social impact of some current information technologies
- Infer benefits and risks of proposed information technologies
- Discuss and analyze issues of privacy, personal information and freedom of speech in cyberspace
- Differentiate issues of intellectual property, open access and fair use
- Demonstrate the ability to perform analysis of various case studies in information technology ethics
- Articulate the legal requirements pertaining to information security management in business and other settings
- Explain the roles and responsibilities of a computer professional
- Apply the principles of intellectual freedom to the information security profession
- Discuss ethical issues relating to professional activities such as: penetration testing, IT security consulting, personal information management, computer forensics investigation, copyright and open access
- Demonstrate the ability to deliver information services that are both legal in Canada and the U.S. and consistent with professional ethics as they have developed over time
- Make informed decisions on complex ethics cases related to information access and service
- Analyze the importance of professional conduct in the workplace, including interpersonal interactions, sensitivity to organizational culture, ability to take initiative and risks and socially responsible behaviour
- Defend the ethical stances they have taken, using ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct or similar ethical frameworks such as: GIAC Code of Ethics, SANS IT Code of Ethics, etc.
Learning outcomes:
- Apply the rules and concepts common to place values of number systems, specifically the binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal number systems
- Convert numbers from/to binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal number systems
- Perform the arithmetic operations in various bases
- Use proving techniques in logic to determine the validity of logic statements
- Recognize and construct logically valid arguments
- Construct and interpret simple and compound logic statements
- Use concepts and constructs of Boolean algebra to solve discrete mathematics related problems
- Simplify compound logic statements
- Solve problems in number theory as it applies to congruencies modulo n, Euclidean algorithm and basic facts about prime numbers
- Perform mathematical induction to prove or disprove number theory and related statements
- Apply the theory of prime numbers in solving problems, including prime factorization, use of Fermat theorem, use of Euler totient function, pseudo-primality testing, and related techniques later used in cryptography and cryptanalysis
- Apply modulus arithmetic in order to solve practical mathematical and cryptographic problems
Learning outcomes:
- Use operating system services and tools such as kernel, shells, process control, file systems and services, and identity and access management services
- Describe network service principles and practices
- Identify security principles and practices
- Configure a Linux operating system
- Perform essential operating system functions: boot, shut down, control processes, mount, secure and backup files and file system
- Install software packages
- Implement administrative shell scripts
- Configure network services
- Implement security, backup, recovery and emergency diagnosis services
- Provision cloud-based resources including network services, servers and containers
- Author infrastructure as code using DevOps best practices
- Orchestrate virtual resources and containers in a cloud environment
Learning outcomes:
- Identify business entities and the relationships between these entities from a business case study
- Use a variety of techniques to gather requirements, create conceptual models and produce diagrams to illustrate normalization
- Select an appropriate name for the relationship based on the nature of that relationship
- Assess the degree and optionality of the relationship
- Draw the entity-relationship model using proper diagramming conventions
- Select the appropriate entity attributes based on business requirements for the storage of information
- Select unique identifiers from the attributes, relationships or the appropriate combination of both
- Design and test models for exclusivity, time and connection traps (identify and model exclusive entities and relationships, assess and resolve fan and chasm traps, evaluate the results of convergent and divergent modeling)
- Define and explain the benefits of normalization as used in the design of business models
- Construct and place tables in third normal form
- Exemplify generally accepted professional standards including honest and ethical conduct, organized in the planning, execution and validation of work, punctuality with regard to the delivery of work, a willingness to approach problems from several perspectives, a willingness to accept direction, an understanding of the limits of their knowledge and the consequences of this
Learning outcomes:
- Assess the security threats posed to corporate information assets
- Evaluate the common approaches to information asset risk management
- Use the components of an information risk assessment appropriately
- Apply the main stages of a qualitative information risk analysis to support the business case
- Analyze threats which negatively impact the business information system
- Analyze corporate information security requirements
- Evaluate corporate information security requirements
- Conduct an information risk assessment using a comparison risk ranking methodology
- Present applied risk issues in a concise way to multi-level groups
- Exemplify generally accepted professional standards including honest and ethical conduct, organized in the planning, execution and validation of work, punctuality with regard to the delivery of work, a willingness to approach problems from several perspectives, a willingness to accept direction, an understanding of the limits of their knowledge and the consequences of this
Learning outcomes:
- Design classes that handle dynamically allocated resources and utilize logical constructs to efficiently solve tasks with linear complexity
- Implement programs that demonstrate multiple inheritance and polymorphism, enhancing the code's reusability
- Write computer programs that leverage the performance advantages of library class implementations for stacks, queues, lists, sets, and maps
- Manage binary-oriented persistent data using object stream input and output techniques, including binary data handling and exception-handling
- Develop programs that incorporate security measures, mitigation strategies, and run-time data protection for both stack and dynamic memories, while also managing storage effectively
- Design multi-tasked solutions using threads along with thread libraries to improve the performance of the programs
- Develop computer programs involving multiple abstract and concrete classes, as well as interfaces, using modern integrated development environment
- Collaborate in a team environment while working on larger-scale computer programs
- Conform to standards of professional practice with respect to code quality, project management and personal integrity
Learning outcomes:
- Apply basic statistical methods to organize and study sets of data
- Classify data and display data in Excel
- Calculate descriptive statistics in Excel and on a calculator
- Determine relationships between variables using correlation coefficient and linear regression, two-way tables and segmented bar graphs
- Calculate probabilities of simple and compound events
- Apply appropriate discrete probability distributions
- Collect random samples
- Calculate probability for continuous variable using the normal distribution
- Create confidence intervals for proportions and means
- Perform hypothesis testing for proportions and means
- Analyze paired data
- Communicate verbally to different audiences -- individuals, small group, entire class
- Express ideas in mathematical language using written notation
- Evaluate statistics produced by a third party
Learning outcomes:
- Decipher packet headers to troubleshoot network problems
- Analyze network requirements and design a suitable IP address subnetting scheme accordingly
- Design and implement a network configuration using routers and switches
- Differentiate between different routing protocols
- Implement a suitable routing protocol based on network needs
- Explain the Layer 2 switching process, and security implications of using switches instead of hubs
- Apply the STP algorithm to a network to determine which ports will be blocked to prevent switching loops
- Perform management tasks on routers and switches
- Compare WAN protocols, and select the right one for a network
- Identify, troubleshoot, and solve network problems
- Demonstrate attitudes consistent with professional practice
Learning outcomes:
- Select digital components (MUX, DEMUX, decoder, priority decoder, PLA, shifters, full adder, flip flops and clocks) using Boolean algebra methodology, and logical gates
- Describe the basic architecture of the von Neumann machine including system bus, memory, and the fetch-decode-execute-write model
- Demonstrate how data is stored in computer memory and CPU registers: integers (signed and unsigned), floating point data using IEEE754 standards, and machine and low-level programming language instructions
- Describe micro-architectures, instruction sets, and assembly language levels for various CPU designs
- Compare modern computer architecture design concepts
- Identify how parallel processing is achieved within various architecture models using: pipelining, scalar processing, superscalar processing
- Explain how cache, pipeline depth and superscalar instruction issues affect the performance of a processor
- Describe the architectural features of modern computer systems such as: array processors, multiprocessor systems, cluster architectures, and other parallel architectures
- Explain the fundamental limitations and bottlenecks in modern processors
- Develop programs using assembly programming language
Learning outcomes:
- Describe HTTP/HTTPS protocols and explain their relation to web application development
- Differentiate client-side and server-side roles and responsibilities in designing and implementing a web application
- Design web pages and web application front ends using markup language, styling, and client scripting languages
- Design multi-page, data-driven, object-oriented, dynamic web applications using best practices in web application design and industry proven design patterns
- Build multi-tier, data-driven web applications using modern web application hosting techniques, business layer management tools and database connectivity APIs
- Distinguish between business logic tier, presentation tier, and data tier components and articulate their role in web applications
- Develop web application components using software design principles and demonstrating understanding regarding the separation of the components' responsibilities
- Design and implement secure web applications and anticipate the security requirements of the web applications
- Make web applications available for user through appropriate production environments
Learning outcomes:
- Analyze and extract contents of IP and embedded protocol headers to detect malicious traffic
- Design and write TCPdump filters to extract packets needed for analysis
- Identify different types of ICMP messages and reasons they are sent
- Predict the correct traffic a host will generate in response to different types of packets
- Explain the role of DNS in everyday Internet usage and identity different DNS message types
- Use Linux tools to probe, map and gather information about networks and hosts
- Differentiate between the components of the HTTP protocol and identify their purpose
- Explain the difference between Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and Cloud Computing
- Employ appropriate industry terminology in all submitted work
- Submit all evaluated work according to schedule
Learning outcomes:
- Use various techniques and tools to protect the subject computer system during the forensic examination from any possible alteration, damage, data corruption or virus introduction
- Use tools in order to discover all files on the subject system regardless of operating system
- Recover discovered deleted files
- Reveal the contents of hidden, temporary and swap files used by the application programs and operating system
- Access the contents of protected or encrypted files
- Analyze the relevant data found in special areas of a disk, including unallocated space and slack space
- Prepare an overall analysis of the subject computer system, as well as a listing of all possibly relevant files and discovered file data
- Provide an analysis of the system layout, file structures discovered, discovered data and authorship information, any attempts to hide, delete, protect, encrypt information, and anything else that has been discovered and appears to be relevant to the overall computer system examination
- Provide expert consultation and/or testimony, as required
Learning outcomes:
- Evaluate the security configuration in an existing database to determine effectiveness
- Analyze the specific object-level and system-level privileges and determine how these privileges can be grouped into roles and assigned to database users
- Evaluate the Virtual Private Database technology and its ability to restrict access to selected rows in the database (fine-grained access control)
- Evaluate role-based security and apply security to a relational database
- Assess the overlapping features available in Oracle security implementation tools
- Evaluate the interrelationships between the granting of object-level privileges and system level privileges to different users
- Analyze the cascading effects of granting object and system-level privileges to multiple users
- Analyze and evaluate the Transparent Data Encryption to enforce Tablespace and table-level security
- Demonstrate proficiency with Oracle's data dictionary
- Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of auditing techniques available to a database administrator
- Create and analyze the backup and recovery procedures that are available to a database administrator to plan for loss of data
Learning outcomes:
- Describe a variety of fundamental algorithms including sorting algorithms, graph algorithms, text processing algorithms, number-theoretic and cryptography algorithms
- Implement a variety of fundamental data structures including stacks, queues, lists, heaps, hash tables and search trees
- Explain the use of big-O, Omega, and Theta notation to describe the amount of work done by an algorithm
- Determine the asymptotic time complexity, both theoretically and experimentally, of various algorithms
- Describe the usage of amortized analysis for appropriate algorithms
- Determine and solve recurrence relations that describe the time complexity of recursively defined algorithms
- Explain the use of randomization in the design of an algorithm such as QuickSort or QuickSelect, particularly where a deterministic algorithm is asymptotically less efficient
- Describe fundamental algorithmic techniques such as divide-and-conquer and the greedy method and how they are used in a variety of algorithms for various applications such as sorting, schedulling and shortest path determination
- Design an algorithm and choose an appropriate data structure to solve standard and non-standard problems in order to achieve an appropriate time and space complexity
- Define the classes P and NP and explain the significance of NP-completeness
Learning outcomes:
- Demonstrate competence in the fundamentals of cryptographic and coding principles
- Analyze computational complexity of classical and modern cryptographic algorithms
- Demonstrate knowledge, analyze and implement series of cryptographic protocols for authentication, authorization, cryptographic key management and secret sharing
- Implement cryptographic algorithms in OOP and structured programming paradigms
- Use mathematical techniques to analyze the quality of pseudo-random generating algorithms and functions, and to build similar on their own
- Show competence in analyzing, measuring and interpreting the level of correlation between information security and encryption key length
- Perform attack on cryptographic algorithms for encryption, decryption and hashing
- Explore and analyze the public key infrastructure (PKI) protocols, roles, key management and implementation problems
- Do research regarding cryptographic standards and patents, digital rights and their protection
For the 6 credits of professional electives for the Honours Bachelor of Cyber Security students select from:
INFO32297: Security and Privacy in the Cloud OR PROG36577: Reverse Engineering and Exploit Development
AND
INFO43921: Malware OR SYST45904: Data Analytics and AI/ML
Gain real-world work experience before graduation
In the Honours Bachelor of Information Science – Cyber Security program, you'll have the benefit of completing a mandatory work term as part of your business degree. This provides valuable work experience and allows you to practice and finesse skills and concepts learned in class. Students who have already obtained more than 420 hours of program-related work experience can apply to have that previous experience applied to the internship credit during their studies.
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