ICS0018 Course Guide

Aims of the Course

The course is primarily meant to the students of Cyber Security Engineering Bachelor's programme at Tallinn University of Technology to cover the more human-oriented aspects of cybersecurity. It is also offered to the students of partner universities under the aegis of EuroTEQ. In the 2023 Spring term it is on its maiden flight (it has been run once earlier, within the programme of the earlier independent IT College).

The main goal is to introduce social engineering (in the cybersecurity sense - the term has different meanings in other disciplines) or non-technical attacks targetting PIBKAC, or the "problem between the keyboard and the chair". The course uses the books by Christopher Hadnagy as its foundation, complementing them with writings of several other authors as well as the lecturers' own notes and experiences. As a mixture of technology, training/education, policy-making and some applied psychology, the course is relatively non-technical and can be handled without specific IT background (various experiences from the online world do help though).

According to the official learning outcomes of the course, the students will - know the essence of social engineering and its main forms and techniques; - recognize main social engineering attacks and react appropriately; - know main measures of prevention and mitigation (in technology, training and policy).