This BSc course gives an overview of the different areas of IT security with the aim of increasing the security awareness of computer science students and shaping their attitude towards designing and using secure computing systems. The course prepares BSc students for security challenges that they may encounter during their professional career, and at the same time, it provides a basis for those students who want to continue their studies at MSc level (taking, for instance, our IT Security minor specialization). We put special emphasis on software security and the practical aspects of developing secure programs.

This BSc course gives an overview of the different areas of IT security with the aim of increasing the security awareness of computer science students and shaping their attitude towards designing and using secure computing systems. The course prepares BSc students for security challenges that they may encounter during their professional career, and at the same time, it provides a basis for those students who want to continue their studies at MSc level (taking, for instance, our IT Security minor specialization). We put special emphasis on software security and the practical aspects of developing secure programs.

Information security is as much an economic problem as it is technical. Even given flawless cryptographic protocols and the availability of perfectly secure software, the misaligned economic incentives of different stakeholders in a system often result in a (very) sub-optimal security level. By guiding you through the jungle of asymmetric information, interdependent security, correlated risk and other concepts characteristic for system security, this elective course will enable you to make better decisions in risk management, security investment and policy design on a system level. Furthermore, the course touches upon the economic aspects of data privacy, an emerging area of interest for users and companies in the big data era.

The sharing and explotation of the ever-growing data about individuals raise serious privacy concerns these days. Is it possible to derive (socially or individually) useful information about people from this Big Data without revealing personal information?
This course provides a detailed overview of data privacy. It focuses on different privacy problems of web tracking, data sharing, and machine learning, as well as their mitigation techniques. The aim is to give the essential (technical) background knowledge needed to identify and protect personal data. These skills are becoming a must of every data/software engineer and data protection officer dealing with personal and sensitive data, and are also required by the upcoming European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).