Online Master's Degree MS in Information Technology Information Security

This course explores the basic concepts and prepares students with the foundation skills for the protection of networks, communication, and data, as well as the knowledge base for planning, implementing, and managing enterprise level security and system integrity. Topics include approaches in an organization to prevent, detect and recover from the loss of information, cryptography and its applications, security in networks and distributed environments.

This course examines the human factors present in cyber security related to ethics, integrity, practices, policies and procedures. Students will design information technology security awareness training and optimize information technology organizational factors to foster a healthy security culture within an organization. Additionally, students will recommend mitigation strategies to protect an organization from human behaviors that could potentially cause a security threat.

Explore a broad range of topics from secure network fundamentals, protocols and analysis; threats and vulnerabilities; application, data and host security, access control and identity management. Examine defensive measures to secure an organization's network. Identify overall network security posture and the basic practices in vulnerability assessment.

This course focuses on the principles and practices underlying the analysis, design, implementation and management of information technology systems. Topics include information system development methodologies, systems planning, requirements analysis, systems implementation, software engineering, project management, and interface, database and process design.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles and practices of object- oriented software development and provides a foundation for developing quality software. Students develop skills in applying object- oriented concepts to solve software problems and implement solutions. The course also teaches the concepts and design of algorithms for problem solving and includes the topics of data structures as they are related to the algorithms that use them. The course provides the technical foundation necessary to handle the material covered in the subsequent IT courses.

In this course, students strengthen their understanding of leadership theory and ethical frameworks in the context of a technology enterprise. Students will apply this understanding to business cases that reflect the need for innovative technology solutions in today's workplace in order to transform the thinking of an organization when change is required or to develop ideas that enable new business strategies.

The course focuses on the essential oral and written technical communication skills needed for producing technical documentation and presentations in many different forms for varying business situations. The course enables students to understand the needs of stakeholders in order to develop different technical documents such as white papers, design specifications, project plans, test plans, user manuals, etc. The ability to communicate research findings using appropriate academic formatting will also be addressed.

This course focuses on computer architecture and the operating systems of digital computers. Students learn about the operational methods of hardware; the services provided by operating systems' software; acquisition, processing, storage and output data; and the interaction between computers. Topics include widely used operating systems such as DOS, Windows, and UNIX.

This course introduces the students to the principles and practices necessary to be an effective IT project manager. The course covers project scope, time, cost, quality and human resource management techniques as applied to the kinds of project management problems and issues unique to the IT environment. Students learn how to design an actual IT project structure and will obtain hands-on experience using project management software. Emphasis is on the techniques of project management, leadership, teamwork and project risk management as applied to the IT environment. Case work is an important part of this course.

Telecommunications is a business resource that must be well managed. This includes the technical aspects and the application of telecommunications technology to solve specific business problems and enhance the strategic position of a business enterprise. Topics include the importance of telecommunication in today's business environment, the analysis, design and implementation of telecommunications systems, the scope of the telecommunications industry and current trends; telecommunications hardware, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) network model, networking technologies and telecommunications software, protocols and standards.

This course is a study of the design, development and implementation of database management systems (DBMS) that emphasize relational DBMS architecture using SQL. Students will design and implement projects and complete case exercises as they are introduced to new developments in database design.

This capstone course is the culminating experience for the M.S. in Information Technology program. The aim of the capstone is to assess students' ability to synthesize and integrate the knowledge and skills they have developed throughout their coursework, rather than introducing new concepts. This course is structured to support student success in fulfilling program requirements.