Member Article

Ethical hacking in the North East

A new course is being launched in the North East to help organisations and individuals defend their computer systems against malicious attacks and computer terrorism. Northumbria University’s BSc (Hons) Ethical Hacking course is scheduled to take its first intake in September 2007 and builds on the University’s expertise in the specialised field of computer forensics.

Ethical hackers are computer and network security professionals who have the skills to locate and strengthen security weaknesses in computer systems. They work within the law to ‘hack’ or ‘penetrate’ into systems in order to determine security weaknesses and flaws, of given system configurations, providing fixers or countermeasures to remove weaknesses. The course emphasises the need to work within the law and Northumbria University has teamed up with a number of specialist information security companies to develop a course which fully meets the future needs of the industry.

Alastair Irons, Associate Dean at the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences at Northumbria, said: “We have drawn on our leading position in research and consultancy in this field and the collaboration we enjoy with the key employers in the sector to design this exciting new course. Students will have access to state of the art computer networks, digital forensics and wireless facilities and will prove to be an asset to the industry in the future. “Ultimately, this course will deliver professionals who will be able to help organisations and individuals defend their systems against malicious attack, especially against computer terrorism.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .