The students of our EU and Global Cybersecurity Fundamentals course in the ECPC Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Management will be confronted with a practical case which will require them to apply their knowledge of the fundamentals of cybersecurity and different types of threats and attacks, and propose measures to deal with them, with a specific focus on encryption.

Our EU and Global Cybersecurity Fundamentals course adopts a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach that requires students to work in small tutorial groups. PBL is a practical and hands-on method of collaborative learning that encourages critical thinking and problem-solving, allowing students to improve their public speaking skills and genuinely understand what they have learned both during lectures and through independent study. The PBL methodology permits students to attend fewer lectures, promotes better knowledge retention, improves motivation, and importantly, allows students to practically apply what they learn in lectures in the context of realistic real-world scenarios. Indeed, PBL is all about learning together in a dynamic way, “helping form you into an assertive professional.”

In today’s tutorial, students will be required to carry out a cybersecurity risk assessment for a fictional company based in the EEA moving to the cloud. A Rapporteur appointed by the students will give a presentation as if they were presenting the team’s reflections/conclusions to the board of the fictional company – i.e., they will need to make concrete recommendations on how to deal with the specific situation (whether the company should proceed with the project) based on a solid cyber/information risk assessment. More specifically, the students will need to identify the most appropriate risk management methodology to be utilized and the reasons for selecting it, the risks identified, and provide a proposal detailing how the company should manage the identified risks.