Members of the research group in Secure and Resilient Systems at Newcastle University are currently preparing a new MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on the practicalities of Cyber Security. The three-week course Cyber Security: Safety at Home, Online, in Life will be running on the FutureLearn platform from 5th September 2016.

The course team preparing to film a discussion on how we handle risks in everyday life

Although it’s the first time our group has participated in MOOC development, it’s the 5th course that Newcastle University’s Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) will have delivered, so we feel we’re in safe hands. Our aim is to introduce course participants to current topics in cyber security research and show how they relate to everyday life: privacy of data, safety of financial transactions, and security implications of smart devices, to take three examples.

For us as researchers and lecturers in security and resilience, it’s an interesting and sometimes challenging process to think about how best to present material in this medium. We’re moving from research papers and presentations, lectures and coursework assignments to short articles, discussion topics, quizzes and video. We hope it will be of interest to anyone with some background knowledge in cyber security and an interest in finding out current practice and research directions in this area.

We hope you can join us on 5th September! You can register for the course at https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/cyber-security.