Online Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity
The online Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity is a 15-credit, part-time graduate-level program designed to equip students and working professionals with specialized training to enrich their current portfolio or to prepare for work in public and private sectors in the area of cybersecurity. All courses are offered online by McGill University. The program may be completed within 8 to 10 months, or to a maximum of three years.
Course Plan
For Fall 2024 entry, the program is designed to be followed on a part-time basis, taking two courses consecutively each semester. Winter 2025 entry students can complete the certificate as full-time students in 6 months, taking four courses in Winter semester, and one course Summer semester.
Each course is offered as a 100% online course of 8 weeks (equivalent to the standard 13 weeks). Students are expected to commit 130 and 150 hours of time for a 3-credit course. The courses will include high-quality video lectures, activities, and individual and group assessments. Most of the course materials will be delivered asynchronously; therefore, students in different time zones may participate and make progress at their own pace. Some selective components may be delivered synchronously when it is most appropriate.
Details
The increasing prevalence of cyber-attacks on the critical IT infrastructure of our society emphasizes the need for a new generation of cybersecurity professionals with the latest knowledge and techniques to protect an organization’s information. This graduate certificate covers a spectrum of cybersecurity topics, from network to operating systems security, from application security to database security, from basic cryptography to advanced secure protocols, and the management of information security. Using real-world business cases and simulations, graduates will develop skills in assessing the information security needs of an organization and formulating short- and long-term cybersecurity strategies and policies.
Prepare for work as cybersecurity professionals with courses on:
- potential cyber threats and common security hardening methods at operating systems, network systems, endpoints and software levels
- threat and risk assessment
- cybersecurity incident management
- security and privacy policies/guidelines evaluations
Careers
After completing the Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity, students will be qualified for careers in:
- IT Security Analyst
- Network Security Analyst
- Malware Analyst
- Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst
- Threat Hunter
Coordinated by top cybersecurity academics and industrial practitioners
The program is created by top cybersecurity academics and industrial practitioners together with the McGill Teaching and Learning Services. Professor Benjamin Fung is a Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity, a Full Professor in the School of Information Studies (SIS), and an Associate Member in the School of Computer Science at McGill University. Contributing subject matter experts include Nicolas Bedard (Cloud Customer Engineer in Google), Steven Ding (PhD and Assistant Professor of Computing at Queen’s University), Eleonore Fournier-Tombs (PhD and Adjunct Professor of Law at University of Ottawa), Amin Ranjbar (PhD and Senior Lecturer at McGill University), and Anton Stiglic (General Director of IT in Lotto Quebec).