Level I Routes

Unit Types: S Route-specific signature units C Core units studied by all students
O - Optional units C/O Units that are core for some routes and optional on other routes
Unit

UNITS

Type

ROUTE NAMES and the DEGREE TITLES they

lead to
Business IT

Computing

Forensics/
Security

BIT, ITM

Comp, CN, SE

FC&S

Business for IT

Network & Software Engineering

Digital Forensics

Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures

Infrastructure Strategy

Project Management & Team

working

Systems Design

Choose TWO of
four, but NOT
BOTH of Web
Programming
and Web
Technology
Integration

C/O

Data Management

X
X
X
X

Application Programming

Web Programming

Choose

Web Technology Integration

ONE of
three

Choose
ONE of four

Network & Software Engineering (Route

Unit)
The unit is assessed through two formal elements of examination (50%) and
coursework (50%):

Coursework is based on analysis of a case study of a solution design and

on the critical review of an engineering article.

Network Engineering

Data Formats Binary, Hex, ASCII, Unicode; IP Address Schemes - Classful

and Classless, Subnet Masks. MAC Address Ethernet, HDLC, PPP, Frame
Relay.
Topologies LAN, WAN, Star, Bus, Token Ring, , FDDI
Layered Models Converged Networks, ISO-OSI, TCP/IP
Application Layer Email, Web, DNS, Telnet, ftp
Transport Layer TCP, UDP
Network Layer IP, Routing Distance Vector (RIP), Link State (OSPF),
Autonomous Systems, IGP/EGP.
Medium Access Layer Ethernet (IEEE 802.3), Wireless (802.11a/b/g/n),
VLAN (802.1q)
Media Types Properties of UTP, Optical, Satellite, Microwave,
Radio/Wireless
Design Considerations and Practice Methods, e.g. Core, Distribution and
Access Layers. Logical and Physical Design. Vertical (Backbone) and
Horizontal cabling, Patch Panel
Ethics and Security CIA Model, Port Security, NAT/PAT. Firewalls, DMZ,
IPS/IDS.

Software Engineering

Software Production. The software production process. Engineering

approaches to software production. The importance of Requirements
Engineering.
Software Quality. Quality plans; standards and procedures;
configuration management; change control; release control. Configuration
management tools. Quality Management Systems.
Metrics. Measuring the quality of both product and process.
Characteristics of software quality.
Software Maintenance. The maintenance process; Issues affecting
maintainability; Refactoring; Re-engineering.
Software Cost Estimation. The nature of software. Factors affecting
productivity. Cost estimation techniques.
Professional and ethical issues. Codes of conduct and codes of
practice. Safety critical systems.

Notes:

Digital Forensics (Route Unit)

The unit will be assessed by coursework (100%)
Coursework will typically involve the capture and analysis of digital images of varying
complexities, generally linked to simulated crime scene investigations. A range of forensic
techniques and tools will be used in the analysis of such images.
Digital Forensics Procedures
History and development. Current ACPO guidelines; chain of custody; CSI: secure, evaluate, collect,
analyse.
Data carving
File systems, file formats (Office, PDF, JPG, PNG, Java class files, zip/jar files, etc.), metadata. Lowlevel analysis tools. High-level analysis tools.
Search, Seizure, and Forensic Analysis
Digital evidence: legal requirements, gathering, managing. Selection and application of tools, e.g.,
Guidance Softwares EnCase, AccessDatas Forensic ToolKit; open source tools.
Applying Forensic Techniques
Examples: search engine optimization, performance analysis, OS and database logs.
Current and Future Directions
Actual and reported crime; current crime profile; emerging patterns of digital criminal behaviour; social
issues.

Notes:

Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures (Route

Unit)
The unit will be assessed by examination (50%) and coursework (50%).

Plan and conduct exploits associated with digital resources using a range of techniques.

The relationship between hacking and the law

Types of hacker: white, grey, black hat. Principles of security; requirements for evidence;
enforcement; ethical issues; civil and criminal activities; overview of law enforcement
agencies and jurisdictions. The nature of digital crime. Civil considerations.
The Layers and the threats
Networking, operating systems, application layer main principles of each; types of access
and access control mechanisms; threats from spyware, malware, hacking; physics of storage
media.
Specific Vulnerabilities
Network layer: routers, servers; OS Vulnerabilities: Windows, UNIX, MAC; application
vulnerabilities: e.g., Office, web servers. Implications for application development.
Hacking Techniques
Footprinting, scanning, enumeration. Sample tools for *nix, Mac and Windows. Social
engineering. Elevated privileges, including password cracking techniques and tools.
Countermeasures.
Malware
Creating a back door using a Trojan. OS viruses: installation, detection, removal.
Penetration Testing
Principles, aims and objectives. Necessary agreements. Selection of relevant tools and
techniques. Planning. Execution. Analysis. Reflection.
Security Planning
Intrusion detection and prevention: techniques and tools. Security planning: issues & testing
strategies. Overview of risk estimation and security planning methodologies.

Notes:

Infrastructure Strategy (Core Unit)

The unit is assessed through a single formal element of coursework (100%).
Coursework is typically based on analysis of a case study and a solution
design, and also an in-class test.
Strategic Issues
The business drivers, IS performance, connectivity; Business continuity;
Information System and Information Technology threats and attacks;
Information Assurance; defences e.g. avoidance and disaster recovery;
organisational and technological perspectives on defence.
Infrastructure strategy; goals, policy and strategy; the implications of CIA;
desiderata, e.g. scalability, resilience, performance, flexibility, Quality of
Service, transparency; probability and failure; modern infrastructure
components, e.g. applications, computers, operating systems, storage &
(inter)networking.
Servers and clients.
Virtualisation; physical and virtual; Example VM solutions to technical and
business problems; analysis of business benefits; challenges of
infrastructure and VM management; the range of VM types; evaluation of
current market offerings.
Storage; file systems; NTFS, extN and VMFS; RAID; Storage Area Network
and Network Addressed Storage, connection technologies, protocols, the
differences between SAN and NAS; management of facilities; silicon
storage versus rotating disks evaluation of performance and reliability.
User Management, Access Control in the operating system, Users, Groups,
World; Linux and MS Windows; User authentication, Kerberos and Active
Directory.
Networks
LAN and WAN technologies: TCP, IP, Ethernet (CSMA/CD), Wi-Fi (CSMA/CA);
VLANs
Design using IP subnets, classful and classless addressing; CIDR and
VLSM; Configuring routers and switches for subnets and VLANs.Networking
infrastructure: Access Control in the network: Benefits and uses of Access
Control Lists (ACL).
Security Policy:
CIA Model of Computer Security: major threats and countermeasures;
Asymmetric and Symmetric encryption, Signing, Certificates, SSL, HTTPS,
VPNs.
Analysis & Design
Approaches to analysis and design of infrastructure: requirements
analysis, performance analysis, traffic analysis, security analysis; design
principles, the cyclic nature of design involving evaluation and synthesis.
Professional Issues
The ethical obligations that arise from clients reasonable expectations of
computing professionals. The ethical dimensions of hardware, users,
operating systems, trust. Computer and Network Security the need to
take care of client and user data, the implications of the FoI and DPA for
computer and network infrastructure.

Notes:

Project Management & Team Working (Core

Unit)
This unit will be assessed by examination (30%) and coursework (70%).
The coursework will consist of a team project in which teams develop a solution to a problem
related to their Level I route/pathway.
The coursework deliverables will include a project plan, a presentation/demonstration of a
solution to the problem and a reflective report.
Project Management processes and techniques.
Project goals and constraints.
Project management functions: planning, monitoring, controlling.
Project Management Techniques: work breakdown structure; task scheduling; Critical Path
Analysis; Gantt and resource charts; techniques for monitoring and controlling projects.
Risk assessment and management.
Project termination and evaluation.
Project management tools.
Methodologies.
Classification of methodologies according to various factors, including areas of application
and coverage of project management. Criteria for methodology selection for particular
projects. Introduction to Prince2.
Quality Systems.
Quality plans; standards and procedures; introduction to configuration management, change
control, system backup and recovery.
Teamworking.
Characteristics and usage of teams within organisations. Factors that make a good team
worker. Psychological/behavioural aspects of working in teams.
Professionalism.
Ethical issues in teamworking and IT project management. Codes of Practice and Conduct:
BCS, ACM.

Notes:

Systems Design (Core Unit)

The unit will be assessed by examination (50%) and coursework (50%).
For coursework, students will carry out a formative group assignment. The extended time of
the assignment provides scope for their design and development thinking. Students will work
as a team, participating in a peer-assessed element.
Object oriented concepts and techniques.
Classes, inheritance, encapsulation & polymorphism, issues of reuse.
The Unified Modelling Language (UML).

Class diagrams, Use cases, Object interaction diagrams, Collaboration Diagrams, State
Transition diagrams, Activity diagrams etc.
Requirements and Design.
The requirements engineering (RE) process; the problem domain and solution systems. The
nature of requirements. Requirements engineering tasks and deliverables. The application of
essential elicitation techniques.
Human computer interface.
Input-output design for complex interactions and integrated processing needs. The need to
comply with relevant legislation, regulations and standards requirements when designing and
building computer-based systems.
Development Methods.
The different activities in a selection of systems development methods: structure, philosophy,
objectives, scope, techniques and their interaction within the different phases or iterations.
The need for professional good practice at every phase and in each role. The effects of
globalisation on the development process.
Modelling the systems/software development process.
Overview of modelling methods e.g. Unified Process with UML, Soft Systems Methods e.g.
SSM; prototyping approaches and Agile approaches such as the Dynamic Systems
Development Method (DSDM) and SCRUM.
Evaluation.
What factors need to be taken into account with evaluation? The tie in between requirements
and evaluation. The importance of usability approaches and their limitations.

Notes:

FOR FOLLOWING FIVE,

MUST CHOOSE TWO
OUT OF FOUR

Data Management (CHOOSE TWO OUT OF

FOUR)
The unit will be assessed by examination (50%) and coursework (50%)
Evaluate alternative strategies for distributed database design.
Understand and apply techniques for optimising database performance.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different data and database models.
Analyse a complex data modelling problem and apply entity modelling techniques and
normalisation to construct a suitable relational data model.
Data.

Data and information, structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. Data models:
relationaltion, object-relational, object oriented, hierarchical and network. principles,
comparisons, performance, functionality trade-offs, benefits and limitations.
Hierarchical Data Schemas.
XML Schema technologies: e.g., DTD, W3C Schemas, Relax NG. Simple and complex data
types. Comprehension of published schemas. Namespaces. Creating user-defined simple
and complex data types. Processing Hierarchical Data Structures
Relational model.
Extended-entity relationship modelling, higher normal form. Relational Algebra.
Performance issues.
Indexing, static and dynamic hashing, multi-dimensional indexing. Comparison of indexing
methods. Indexing strategies. Evaluating alternative strategies.
Distributed Databases.
Structure, design and necessary trade-offs, fragmentation and replication. Co-ordination and
management of transactions, comparison and evaluation of commit protocols, concurrency
and deadlock management Distributed query processing and optimisation.
Transaction Processing.
ACID properties, transaction processing, recovery management, concurrency and locking,
Database Administration:
Security, authorisation, encryption, privacy.
OLAP and Data Mining.
OLAP and data warehouses architecture and design, Multidimensional models for OLAP
applications, Aggregation, ROLAP and MOLAP, Populating a warehouse, Data mining tasks,
Mining Associations, classification, clustering and regression.
Further SQL:
Recap on joins, aggregate functions, subqueries, more complex queries, Query optimisation
strategies, clustering. SQL programming techniques stored procedures.

Notes:

Application Programming (CHOOSE TWO OUT

OF FOUR)
This unit will be assessed by examination (50%) and coursework (50%).
The coursework will typically consist of one or two elements and will involve the design,
building and testing of an application.
Object Oriented Concepts.
Build on topics covered in first year and extending students experience with: classes, objects
and object interaction, encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism
Code design.
OO techniques; class diagrams, pseudo code, refactoring, ownership and copying of code,
maintainability and documentation. Professional approaches to design.
Professional practices:
Version control, continuous integration, debugging, code maintainability, performance,
interfaces, testing.
Testing.
Developing test plans, executing test plans, producing test data sets, different testing
strategies. Unit testing, automated testing
Paradigms and languages:
Explore different languages and paradigms eg Object oriented programming, functional
programming languages such as Java, C++, C#, F#, Ruby
Patterns and frameworks:
Gang of Four patterns, code smells, refactoring to patterns, MVC
Concurrency:
Threads, synchronisation, scheduling and priority, thread groups, performance
Persistence:
Impedance mismatch, ORM, database connection protocols (e.g.,ODBC, JDBC), executing
queries, handling results, performance issues. Reading and writing text (including XML) files
and binary files. file system traversal.
Network Communications:
Sockets, UDP/TCP, RMI
Data structures:
Linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, sets. Sorting and searching algorithms

Notes:

Web Programming (CHOOSE TWO OUT OF

FOUR)
The unit will be assessed by examination (50%) and coursework (50%).

Typically the coursework will consist of learners being presented with a business problem and
having to solve it using e-business technologies.

Web development:
Interface design, dynamic web site development, client and server side programming, data
driven web sites. PHP, .NET, Ajax, HTML, CSS
Development tools:
Web application frameworks, web templating systems, content management systems
User Interface/ experience:
Understanding the audience, usability evaluation, HCI issues, credibility. Understand and
apply usability and accessibility guidelines and legislation. Responsive design, browser
compatibility.
Security threats:
Malicious code, unwanted programs, phishing and identity theft, hacking and cybervandalism, credit card fraud/theft, spoofing, spam, denial of service attacks, sniffing
Legal, ethical, social issues:
Privacy and information rights, intellectual property rights, regulation, public safety and
welfare, digital rights management, localisation. Social networks and online communities,
Facebook, twitter, blogs
Development:
Version control, continuous integration, agile practices
Testing:
Developing test plans, executing test plans, producing test data sets, different testing
strategies. Unit testing, automated testing
Search Engine Optimisation:
Explore how web applications can be optimised, logs and traffic analysis.

CANT DO BOTH WEB PROGRAMMING AND WEB

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

Notes:

Web Technology Integration (CHOOSE TWO

OUT OF FOUR)
The unit will be assessed by examination (50%) and coursework (50%).

Typically the course work will consist of the presentation of a problem, the solution of which
will consist of some element of the selection, design or building of a solution using web
technologies.

Web development
Processes (e.g., content creation, publish and update), methodologies (e.g., iterative and
incremental development, UCD) and techniques (e.g. PHP, Ajax, HTML, CSS).
Pre-built development environment
Installing, configuring and deploying ready built content management systems and
frameworks (e.g. Joomla and Wordpress) on web servers.
Template design
Designing front end (i.e., themes) in a user centred perspective and applying it to selected
content management systems.
Sustainable Web application development
Legal, ethical issues, localisation and other technical aspects etc.
Netmarketing
SEO and Google analytics
Testing
Functional tests and user tests.

CANT DO BOTH WEB PROGRAMMING AND WEB

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION
Notes: