SIM UOW computer science cybersecurity + digital systems security

• 3 months = 1 sem
• 1 sem = 2 modules

Sem break during last 3 weeks of 3rd month. So essentially is 2 months for 2 mods

Overall an okay course. Disappointed by admin, organisation, planning, resources, ambiguous assignments, unreasonable exams. But I wouldn't say I regret. I genuinely learned new things and I would like to believe there's some value to having this degree under my belt, even if it is not as prestigious. There aren't many other options for cybersecurity degrees in Singapore, and this course is the fastest. Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic. I am comparing heavily with my previous course in SP DISM.

I am writing this repo to consolidate what I've learnt each sem, and also give advice to whoever takes this course. I guess for most of us, the goal of this course is to increase our chances of landing a higher pay job, or any job at all, within the cybersecurity industry. As of writing, I am still in the midst of studying this course so I will update when this degree has realised my investment

UPDATE I found a job some time ago as a Cloud / DevOps Engineer. It's exactly what I have been building towards. Large company and good pay. Did I get the job solely because of this degree? Surely not. I guess it's right time right place, my entire portfolio, and one wildcard - Singaporean with high security clearance. So I guess this degree isn't useless lol. But this course.. is not great. It's okay if you have no better options. Beware

Basically a C++ module that goes quite deep. NOT an introduction to C++ lol

• Assignment 1 - Allocating memory for array with new and delete
• Assginment 2 - Inheritance and polymorphism
• Assignment 3 - Generic programming with templates and operator overloading

Overall good module. I learnt a lot about C++. Mr Tian is good albeit a bit sexist lol. Just boomer things I guess. He provides his own learning materials outside of the module. Gives chance to students also. One thing I kinda disagree with, is the assignment difficulty. The main learning objectives of the assignments are listed above but a heavy bulk of the assignment also involves other complex (at least for me lol maybe I'm just a weak student) concepts such as printing an X Y grid in terminal, finding algorithm for coordinates within/ on shapes. I suppose this is to give us extra learning opportunities because I was introduced to ray casting algorithm. But these are core functionalities of the assignment program that's graded so these extra concepts being tested are out of scope. But uni don't need to score so high right so maybe it's no big deal actually lol.

Basically a basic php module

• Assignment 1 - simple php webpages
• Assignment 2 - simple php webpages with SQL

Overall bad module. To me, a web server should have at least MVC architecture but we weren't taught this at all. Instead, it's just front end php files talk to database directly. We were given a few weeks worth of lectures before finally having the first practical. I don't understand why lectures cover programming fundamentals like variables, operands, arrays etc.. Students entering this module already have programming background so why waste time. I was expecting my first lesson to be like "How to write a middleman php server with API" or something. Nope none of that was ever taught. And the MOST FRUSTRATING? During the assignment presentation, Dr Loo tests things outside of the assignment specification. He claims he mentioned them during his lessons. But there's no proof. No black and white. The Assignment requirements are so vague. Exam was 80% memory work of php syntax. What the fuck

Intermediate database module using oracle db and mongo db

• Assignment 1 - functional dependency. A bit like maths
• Assignment 2 - PLSQL
• Assignment 3 - MongoDB

Overall dificult module. Maybe just for me lol. Covers quite a lot of concepts, but doesn't go too deep especially for mongo. I found it interesting that Oracle DB is used instead of the usual MySQL. I guess good opportunity to learn different database types. Mr Sionggo is not bad. He answers my questions. I was very taken aback when I started this module because the concept of functional dependency is quite complex. But I think towards the end of this module you should feel more confident with the concepts. I am a little critical of the mongo portion of this module though. Many syntax taught are already deprecated in the latest version of mongo. The syllabus has not updated for many many many years. And also from my understanding, Mongo is designed to be used in a cloud based microservices architecture. But this is not covered at all. I suppose because this would diverge into web development and design. One big selling point of Mongo, as compared to traditional SQL, is the cloud features like shards and clusters. So I feel this module is more of functional dependency with Oracle DB, and an introduction to Mongo DB. I think it's better to split the Mongo portion from this module. Mongo should be taught together with web dev.

*EXAM TIP! The exam will have 4 questions. Q1 on functional dependency, Q2 on indexing, Q3 on PLSQL, Q4 on JSON/BSON. And of course several sub questions within the 4 topics. I personally find the PLSQL question the hardest because the syntax for SQL and PLSQL is just soooo vast. There's so many functions and queries to memorise. Again, I disagree that the exam tests on memory. What's the point of testing PLSQL syntax? What's the point of testing any syntax even? I understand the concepts of triggers, for loops, group by and join table but if I cannot remember the syntax, I can't do the entire question and I can't show my understanding at all. The exam should come with a cheatsheet documenting function paramters and syntax. Akin to how a Math exam has formula sheet. Moreover during COVID the exam was open book so what the fuck?!

**** and also now it has changed from using oracle SQL to postgressql. Feels shoe horned in

Introduction to Cybersecurity. Doesn't go deep or practical woohoo only one assignment. Just research only

Overall easy module. The lecturer, Mr Partham, is EXTREMELY dry. His lectures suck. On the other hand, my tutor Mr Lionel, is much better. Took a glance at his linkedin and he's much more accredited than Mr Partha. Mr Lionel has a lot of real world working experience and he always shares his stories with us. Nothing much to say lah it's a simple module. I think there's another related module touch on the practical side of all the theory covered in this module.

I don't even know if I can call this an introduction to AI...

• One assignment, one quiz. But the "quiz" is more like an assignment. So I'll say 2 assignments essentially
• manually calculate linear regression, logistic regression, ID3, SVM, gradient descent

This module touches on very deep and complex concepts about AIML. Our lecturer Dr Wei Zong seems like the real deal. I think he studied in UOW and did a phd in AI or something. Interesting to see that he references his own work in the lecture slides. Whenever he brings up a new concept, he often expands on it until he says that it is out of scope of the module. He even knows some controversy within the AIML community that he included in it the lecture slides lol. I think he really is an expert in the AIML field. And with Dr Wei Zog's expertise, also means the content is very complex. Almost every lesson I couldn't catch what is going on. It got much better when we did the lab tutorials where we had to manually calculate things like linear regression, ID3, SVM, gaussian distribution etc... Interesting topics really, and he does explain the application of AIML in cybersecurity. My skeptic side is telling me that the course heads just wanted some form of AI being taught included in the course so they shoe horned this module. Actually we were supposed to take CSCI301 or something... an IoT module or something but all of a sudden I was notified that the module will change. I feel this is not right at all because the school is literally not complying with the terms of our PEI contract. We paid money for this agreed set of modules but they just changed it?? Whatever, I am so done with trying to talk to the course heads. They do not reply.

Light introduction and light hands-on on cybersecurity

• one assignmenmt, 3 open book quizes
• DVWA SQLi, dirbuster, nmap, hashcat, MSFvenom RCE

My tutor, Mr Zong Fu, is very good. He is one of the heads at Ensign. He always shares stories and links the things taught, to his real world consulting experience. I don't have much to talk about this module. I took CEH previouly so this mod was not difficult for me. I still disagree with exams testing specific syntax. There was a portion of this exam that asked for what command to perform what scenario for insstance which tool is used for password cracking and what command to use. If you use the tools very frequently then yeah I suppose remembering the commands would be no issue but for a exam, what is the point of testing syntax? Syntax can change, can deprecate but concepts generally remain the same. But overall the exam was mostly "understanding" type questions and not so much memory type so it was okay.

Things that need to be deep are light, and things that can be light, are deep zz. Learnt a few things, but for the most part is like abstract "cybersecurity" theory that doesn't really tie back to latest tools. Maybe a good mod for people who are completely new to cybersecurity. Tutors and lecturer seem to be out of sync. Even among tutors. Organisation of mod materials a little messy. Assignments seem a but dumb to me... they hardly touch cybersecurity tools... they're more like over engineered POC to explain a simple concept

For example, assignment 3 requires a group to DEVELOP a MOCK IDS type CLI application to show understanding of how IDS works. It doesn't even touch on collecting system metrics and observability. I think it's a good assignment to show cybersecurity concept understanding BUT a big portion of this assignment relies on programming understanding. Yes of course we can use chatgpt but it still requires refining and debugging. So why is so much emphasis placed on DEV when this is a cybersec mod??? Why not give an assignment to set up prometheus in a VM and display metrics on grafana ? Probably because this module is old and recycled since 10 years ago and universities don't really put in effort to teach latest tools...

Wow first time I am so impressed by my lecturer. Mr Willy really is a big deal in the cryptology field. He keeps it real without yapping crap. Big brain mod. Oh I just found out he's the head of school

I dropped this mod because it's too hard

very very dry mod... quite content heavy too, on networking details... but assignments and exam have been revised to be easier compared to past years. Good to learn networking at a deeper level but its just so dry...

Teacher is good. Lenient exam marking.

kinda feels like a leadership course. The topics covered are relevant and valid but the teacher is quite condescending... He thinks he's a big deal and better than everyone else. Perhaps this is a needed trait for a business owner. Actually an easy mod because no exams. Only 4 assignments. 4 essays to write.

Overall a difficult mod, not because it is complex, but because there's a lot of things to do.

• one main assignment/ project
• one open book class test
• one exam

very important that you find good team mates. You can pick

I personally am quite well versed at web dev. However my team mates were all not. This is because the course, from year 1 to year 3, does not teach proper web dev. Maybe simple HTML only. And then all of a sudden there's this year 3 module that requires a web app to be built within 1.5 months. I think this mod should remove the web dev portion, and focus solely on the planning and documentation

I disagree with the syllabus. We're being taught to design wireframe, sequence diagram, BCE diagram, etc to design and plan for a web application. But I disagree that all these planning should be so detailed. There will always be changes in development so there is no point being so detailed during planning.

We're being taught to have these in the sequence diagram during the planning phase:

user login with login(string username, string pw) , and if login pass, return (boolean b)

to me this is unnecessarily detailed. For sure durving development there will be changes. Maybe its not a boolean return type, maybe its a token? Could be so many things so instead of being so detailed, I feel it's better to be more broad such as:

user login with username and password , and if login pass user receives proof of authorised identity, and proof of authorised role

Feels like what we're being taught was created by a project manager instead of a developer. The syllabus is not designed for efficient dev. It's for management to look like they know better than developers

another thing I'm unhappy with - the standards for use case disgram, BCE diagram, these are not clearly defined anywhere. The teacher scribbles on his ipad on shows it in class. There are not notes that standardises the format. We're given some past examples to reference but they are inconsistent as well. So how to do exam? Anyhow do and if teacher don't like you then mark you down??

easy module with nice teacher, Ms Jasslyn

• assignment 1: write weekly blogs for 4 weeks
• assignment 2: group presentation on cultural differences
• exam: MCQ + open ended

Concepts taught are quite straightforward. I disagree a bit with the syllabus lol whats new. But Ms Jasslyn is nice and explains well. Not much to say - pay attention, attend classes, ask questions. This mod is quite 'English heavy', and you even need to do O lvl style 'PEEL'. International students with poor english struggled in my class. For me its just an elective I have to clear so I didn't put in a lot of effort

The mod is very grey. Allegedly no one fails this mod. It sucks ass because requirements are so ambiguous. And the worst is if u kena this person called Mr Premerajan. Apparently he is the few people that started this module but he is totally unqualified. He did not study IT or cybersecurity. He has not released any applications. He has no real track record of technical competency. Who the hell is he lol and yet he controls your grade. Fucked up module with fucked up school staff