Masters in Cyber Criminology

The number of hours for the graduate degree as described in this web page will be effective in Summer 2018.

Admissions Requirements

Students pursuing the MS in Cyber Criminology (MS CC) degree will be admitted to and graduate from the Computer Science Department. Thus, the minimal admissions requirements are (1) an undergraduate GPA of no less than 3.0 and (2) a score of 1000 or greater on the combined verbal and quantitative portions of the GRE.

Degree Requirements

The initial track for the MS CC degree will be coursework only. The general degree requirements will include 3 graduate criminology courses, 6 graduate computer science (CS) courses related to information assurance and computer security and 1 additional criminology or CS course for a total of 30 hours.

In addition, MS CC students will have to complete certain undergraduate prerequisites, shown below, before graduating, and will likely have to complete a subset of these courses before being admitted to the MS CC degree program. Note that CIS 4385 is required for the FSU BS in Cyber Criminology and the other four courses are required for the FSU BS in Computer Science and BA in Computer Science degrees.

Undergraduate Prerequisites for the MS CC Degree Program:

  • CDA 3100 Computer Organization I (3)
  • CIS 4385 Cybercrime Detection and Forensics (3)
  • COP 4530 Data Structures, Algorithms, and Generic Programming (3)
  • COP 4610 Operating Systems and Concurrent Programming (3)
  • COP 4710 Theory and Structure of Databases (3)

The graduation requirements include completing all of the undergraduate prerequisites, completing 3 graduate criminology courses, and completing 6 graduate computer science courses. The graduate courses for the MS CC degree are listed below:

Criminology Courses from Which MS CC Students Are Required to Take at Least Three:

  • CCJ 5016 Crimes of the Powerful (3)
  • CCJ 5285 Survey of Criminal Justice Theory and Research (3)
  • CCJ 5606 Survey of Criminological Theories (3)
  • CCJ 5607 History of Criminological Thought (3)
  • CCJ 5636 Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice (3)

Up to date course descriptions for the above criminology courses can be found at: http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/academic-syllabi.php.

Computer Science Courses Required for MS CC Students:

  • CIS 5370 Computer Security (3)
  • CNT 5412 Network Security, Active and Passive Defenses (3)
  • CNT 5505 Data and Computer Communications (3)
  • CNT 5605 Computer and Network Administration (3)
  • COP 5611 Advanced Operating Systems (3)
  • COP 5725 Database Systems (3)

The one additional criminology or CS course will be a graduate elective. The criminology courses can be taken in any order as none of these courses are prerequisites for any of the other courses. However, the 6 required graduate computer science courses each have undergraduate prerequisites that must be completed before the student will be allowed to take these courses.