Graduate Certificate
Information Assurance and Cybersecurity

The Graduate Certificate in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity is a university-issued graduate certificate. It is designed for information technology professionals and graduate students enrolled in related fields who are wishing to gain training in this focused topic.

Students completing this certificate will have a strong understanding of

  • The fundamentals of information assurance and cybersecurity.
  • In-depth knowledge in critical and upcoming areas such as security and privacy in network and Internet systems, cyber-physical systems and critical infrastructure, Internet-of-Things and software systems, and cloud computing.

Admission Requirements

Students seeking this graduate certificate program must be admitted to the Graduate School in either degree bound status, or non-degree Category A status. International students will not be issued an I-20 for pursuing a certificate program only. They may obtain a certificate only while concurrently pursuing a graduate degree. Students should contact the Graduate School to determine if they need to apply for admission to this status, or need to reactivate their enrollment file. Students who have not completed graduate coursework at Wichita State University will need to apply for admission to Category A status in any related field, by submitting an application, and application fee to the Graduate School. Two official transcripts from all schools attended must be sent directly to the Graduate School from the institution issuing the transcript. To be considered official, transcripts must be received in the Graduate School office in sealed envelopes from the issuing institution.


Degree Admission – The student must have earned a bachelor's degree from a regionally accredited institution or a recognized institution in another country whose requirements for the bachelor's degree are substantially equivalent to an American four-year bachelor's degree. The student must also have a grade point average of at least 2.750 based upon the last 60 hours of course work (or nearest semester or term break to this), including any post-bachelor's graduate work, and no more than 9 hours of background deficiencies in the desired field. Some programs may require a higher minimum grade point average.


Non-Degree, Category A – Students who already possess a graduate degree and who do not wish to pursue a second degree, should apply for non-degree, category A admission. The student must have earned a bachelor's degree from a regionally accredited institution or a recognized institution in another country whose requirements for the bachelor's degree are substantially equivalent to an American four-year bachelor's degree. The student must also have a grade point average of at least 2.750 based upon the last 60 hours of course work (or nearest semester or term break to this), including any post-bachelor's graduate work. Some programs may require a higher minimum grade point average.

 

Students who do not have a minimum of a bachelor's degree in computer science -  or a strong background in computer science, may be required to take additional coursework in preparation for enrollment in the certificate program.

Students must have knowledge of the following specific topics related to discrete structures, algorithms, databases, and operating systems, if not the student must take the corresponding courses as indicated below.

 Algorithms:

  1. Algorithm Analysis
  2. Computational Complexity
  3. Best/Worst/Average Case Behavior
  4. Optimization
  5. Searching, Sorting
  6. String Matching Algorithms
  7. Iterative Algorithms
  8. Recursion
  9. Greedy Algorithms
  10. Hill Climbing

 Students lacking knowledge of the Algorithms topics must take CS 560 Design of Algorithms.

 

 Data Structures:

  1. Numerical Representations
  2. Strings
  3. Lists
  4. Arrays
  5. Vectors
  6. Heaps
  7. Queues
  8. Stacks
  9. Buffers
  10. Trees
  11. Objects
  12. Data formats in languages
  13. Categories

Students lacking knowledge of the Data Structures topics must take CS 400 Data Structures.

Databases:

Types and structures of modern database management systems and their applications, such as:

  1. Hierarchical Databases
  2. No SQL Databases
  3. Object-Based
  4. Object-Oriented Databases

 Students lacking knowledge of the Data Structures topics must take CS 665 Databases

Operating Systems:

  1. Privilege States
  2. Processes and Threads, Process/Thread Management
  3. Memory Management, Virtual Memory
  4. Inter-process Communications
  5. Concurrency and Synchronization, Deadlocks
  6. File Systems
  7. Input / Output
  8. Clear Interface Semantics

 Students lacking knowledge of the Operating Systems topics must take CS 540 Operating Systems.

Required Courses for Certificate

All courses applied to the certificate need to be taken at the graduate level at Wichita State University. Current undergraduate students who plan to enroll in the certificate after they graduate should talk to the graduate coordinator about the options of taking courses at the graduate level (if an undergraduate students takes any of the courses below at the undergraduate level, they will not apply to the certificate and the student will not be able to retake the course at the graduate level; thus it is important to look at constructs such as the "senior rule" and the "accelerated M.S. programs".)

This certificate consists of 4 courses, 3 of which are required, and 1 elective.

  • The three required courses are listed below. With the help of these required courses, students will develop a strong and sound foundation of current data and network systems, security and privacy challenges in these systems and fundamental cryptographic and cybersecurity techniques to overcome these challenges.
    • CS 664 - Computer Networks (old code: CS 736)
      Pre-requisites: CS 300 and IME 254
    • CS 656 - Introduction to Cybersecurity (old code: CS 766)
      Pre-requisites: CS 664 or CS 764
    • CS 767 - Foundations of Network Security
      Pre-requisites: CS 664; recommended previous course:CS 656
  • Students in the certificate program are required to take one elective course. The current list of electives courses is listed below. The electives allow students to explore information assurance and security challenges in upcoming and modern networking, hardware and software systems. For prerequisites, please refer to the graduate catalog.
    • CS 898 AM - Cyber-Physical System Security
    • CS 898 AN - Advanced Topics in Cybersecurity (Cloud Computing Security)
    • CS 898 BC - Information Theoretic Security (also EE 877AA)
    • CS 898 CC - Security for Real-Time Internet-of-Things
    • CS 697 AN - Hardware-Based Security Engineering

Certificate Requirements

In the semester in order to meet the certificate requirements students must:

  • A Plan of Study must be submitted to the Graduate School. Please work with the program director to complete this form.
  • Submit an Application for Graduate Certificate, along with the $15.00 filing fee, online through the Graduation Links channel in the myWSU portal, no later than the 20th day of classes for the fall or spring semester or the 10th day of classes for the summer semester.
  • A cumulative grade point average of 3.000 must be maintained for all courses comprising the certificate program with no grades that generate fewer than 2.00 credit points per credit hour.

Application to the Certificate Program

  • Please follow this link to the admission application pages.

Contact Information