Program Overview

Terrorism, political violence, international crime, cyber-crime and climate change all pose threats to our individual and collective security. Organisations and agencies across the world need specialised skills and knowledge to help understand and assess these risks and potential security threats.  

In this course you’ll learn new ways of thinking to help address today’s biggest global security challenges. You’ll learn how to analyse and communicate complex information as you explore different security approaches, policies and priorities across the world.

This course can be combined with criminology, global politics and policy or international aid and development courses to broaden your skills, knowledge and career prospects even further.

Major: Cyberspace, Policy and Security

Cybersecurity is the practice of deploying people, policies, processes and technologies to protect systems and information.

In a world that increasingly relies on information technology, cybercrimes have emerged as a major global security threat – costing around $1 trillion a year.

The Cyberspace, Policy and Security Major provides you with critical understandings of contemporary challenges to security, particularly how transnational crime, terrorist organisations and state actors seek to exploit our reliance on information technology.

This major combines technical, security and criminology units to provide students with highly-relevant professional skills in security, intelligence, policy, governance, investigation and law enforcement.  You'll gain understandings of the architecture, operation and protection of IT systems, consider critical issues in the governance and implementation of cyber security, explore the roles of government and industry in ensuring cybersecurity, and identify the processes by which cybercrime is investigated and prosecuted.

3 reasons to study Cyberspace, Policy & Security at Murdoch

• In Australia, cybersecurity is recognised as one of the country’s principal security risks – a concern that escalated during the Covid pandemic due to our increased dependence on the internet, meaning there are many employment opportunities.
• Students at Murdoch are able to explore work integrated learning opportunities to work alongside industry partners and gain practical experience.
• Murdoch students get a competitive advantage in their career as they explore national and international security issues, particularly in relation to the Middle East, Southeast and South Asia, where our teaching staff have special expertise.

What you’ll learn

• Cyber security and its challenges in policy, governance, technical, and enforcement contexts.
• Competing strategies, theoretical understandings, and sources of knowledge that inform approaches to cyber security.
• How to apply technical skills, investigative strategies and theoretical approaches in order to solve real-world problems and design cyber security solutions.
• How to design and manage projects of increasing sophistication, involving ethical inquiry, while working independently and with others.