CYB102 – Mathematics for Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity practitioners need to be able to use mathematics in order to grasp the underlying principles of cryptography and to analyse security by design for computer networks. This unit comprises an introduction to fundamentals of discrete mathematics for cybersecurity applications. Topics covered in the unit include: fundamentals of logic and proof, principles of set theory, functions and sequences, introduction to algorithms contextualised for cybersecurity, principles of number theory and its applications to cryptography, and introduction to mathematical induction, recursion and counting. Topics also cover relations, basic graph theory for networking and network security, and trees. The final component of the unit comprises an introduction to modular arithmetic and exponentiation with applications to cybersecurity, including principles of public key certificates, RSA and Diffie-Helman.

Learning Outcomes:

• Explain the basic concepts and applications of abstract algebra and logic, counting, set theory and number theory
• Recall and apply mathematical procedures of proof, for circumstances in which these procedures and proofs apply
• Demonstrate the ability to solve discrete mathematics problems
• Formulate mathematical problems and solutions using expressions appropriate to the context of a cryptographic problem
• Explain mathematical principles and their applications for cybersecurity