Communication Software and Cyber Security - Study line

Cloud and Cybersecurity study line

Development and analysis of applications in a communication context. This includes cloud systems, software-defined networks and security.

Purpose and Content

While traditional software developers focus “just” on the application requirements from a user perspective, careful design of innovative and advanced (information and telecommunication-based) services and applications require fundamental understanding of the underlying supporting telecommunication infrastructure and mechanisms, in order to streamline the design and implementation of services and accommodate mutual requirements to fulfil users (final customers, subscribers, operators, or other) expectations. This study line is aimed at students with interest on design, analysis and implementation of telecommunication services and applications, from a cloud-native perspective. The aim is to provide deep understanding of the technological enablers of cloud network environments and the performance implications for applications and services running in and based on such environments (cloud, fog, edge), all within a context of network softwaization and programmability. Other related aspects of service-application deployments, such as interaction and integration of heterogeneous environments, innovation and business models are also of concern.

The trend towards softwarisation of telecommunication functionality is irreversible. This has led to running softwarised versions of networking and services functional entities in virtualized environments, centralized in cloud data centers or distributed to the edges, depending on the application needs (Fog/Edge). This network softwarisation has been accompanied by a parallel trend on network programmability, leveraging techniques such as software defined networking. Together, they have enabled the automation of deployment and operation, and the general management of network architectures and telecommunication services. All this has and is transforming the way services apre provided in the telecommunication and other industries (NFV, DevOs, Infrastructure as Code, etc).

This new softwarised and disaggregated environment extends the surface attack possibilities for cyber crime. The approach to cybersecurity from this study line is therefore very much based on infrastructure and networking security, applied to these new environments, as a new branch of traditional cybersecurity.

The competences for a student following the study line will be a deep understanding as well as practical experience with the techniques and mechanisms underlying these new cloud-based scenarios, and implications on the features and performance of the services supported by them.

Career Profile

New deployment and operation mechanisms for services and applications, based on virtualization and containerization platforms, their networking and troubleshooting will be on demand in any industry in the years to come as (Private/Public/Hybrid) clouds (Cloud/Fog/Edge), microservices , DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code becomes the defacto operational procedures in different industries. Candidates from this study line will have the understanding of the inner mechanisms and performance implications of such new environments.

Structure of Studies
This study line requires that the students fulfill the requirements specified in the admission description of the programme in Communication and System Design described in the programme specification.

In addidtion to the compulsory courses and requirements listed in the Curriculum, the following rules apply for this study line:

For the Advanced programme specific courses, the student must choose a total of 20 ECTS within the list below (if total of more than 20 ECTS of technological specialisation courses are chosen, they will count in the Electives category). Course 34370 Cloud Networking (5 ECTS) is mandatory.

02233	Network Security	5	point	Spring F4A (Tues 13-17)
34343	Mobile backhaul networks	5	point	Outside schedule structure
34359	SDN: software-defined networking	5	point	Autumn E5B (Wed 13-17)
34370	Cloud Networking	5	point	Spring F3A (Tues 8-12)
34371	Communication Network Security	5	point	Autumn E5B (Wed 13-17)