Pre-sessional cyber security materials

Students attending either our Graduate Apprenticeship MSc Cyber Security (part-time for employees in cyber roles) or MSc Cyber Security (full-time students) may find materials listed on this page useful for preparing for their studies. 

Both programmes assume prior experience in computer science or a related area. The graduate apprenticeship programme is more tailored around expertise that staff in cyber roles will already have, while the full-time programme has requirements on experience with computer programming, networking, and mathematics. The exact requirements are provided on the corresponding programme pages for the GA MSc Cyber Security and in person MSc Cyber Security

Students of both programmes may find the following materials helpful: 

  1. "Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems" by Ross Anderson (third edition), Strathclyde’s library has a copy, the third edition is freely available. This is a very accessible introduction to a huge breadth of what cybersecurity involves and is very accessibly written, while providing links to the academic literature if you want to dig deeper into any topic. Consequently, it is both a great introduction and a useful practitioner handbook. Everyone who is doing cybersecurity should read this cover to cover. 
  2. Computer networking: Computer Networks, Andrew S Tanenbaum, David J Wetherall, Pearson, 978 1 292 02422 6 
  3. Computer programming expertise is useful for the Graduate Apprenticeship MSc and Essential for the full-time MSc. You may find the following resources useful: 
    1. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python 3 or further resources on the Python wiki. 
    2. Resources for learning Java
    3. The W3Schools project has useful resources for learning various languages and concepts: 
      1. Python 
      2. C
      3. Git
  4. Some understanding of git will be helpful, and this game is a fun way of learning that: Oh my Git!
  5. Understanding of how to use Unix like systems and command lines will be helpful. If you have access to such a system (e.g. a Kali Linux VM image), then you could try: 
    1. The bashcrawl game 
    2. Codecademy’s Learn the command line
    3. Codecademy’s Learn Bash Scripting 

MSc Cyber Security (full-time students) specific content 

Strathclyde offer a variety of pre-sessional English language courses to international students, including a four-week course that is free to students registering on the MSc Cyber Security. We strongly recommend that students who would like additional support with their English language abilities make full use of the pre-sessional classes, if they can. We also offer free English language tuition during your studies. Please see the following links for full details: 

The full-time MSc requires a good understanding of basic discrete mathematics (“Mathematics e.g. set theory, graphs etc” from the entry requirements). If you are not confident of that then previous students have found “Discrete Mathematics” by Jean Gallier very helpful and accessible and subsequently had excellent results. 

The full-time MSc also requires a good understanding of programming cognate with completing an undergraduate degree in computer science (“Significant programming experience is required” from the entry requirements). At a bare minimum, students should be familiar with the concepts outlined in this short introduction. 

Audiobooks and podcasts 

Some applicants have indicated that they like audiobooks or podcasts as a means of preparing. 

Cory Doctorow has a range of fiction and non-fiction books which have audiobook versions Red Team Blues has a lot of accurately represented cybersecurity stuff in it even though it is fiction. Brian Krebs has an audiobook version of his Spam Nation book (2014).  

You might try: 

Let us know how you get on with these materials, or if you come across other materials you think we should include on this list.