Minor in Applications of Cybersecurity

The minor in Applications of Cybersecurity is designed for students at Iowa State University majoring in non-computing disciplines. Students who complete this minor will learn cybersecurity in the context of their declared major or discipline. The minor will consist of seven basic credits in cybersecurity concept courses consisting of foundational and skills-specific topics, two credits from component add-ons to existing discipline-specific courses, and six double-counted credits from existing program courses.

The goals of this minor are that students will:

  • Define computer security terms and mechanisms
  • Describe fundamental security concepts
  • State and evaluate computer security best practices
  • Describe the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of security mechanisms and concepts
  • Give examples of common security threats, threat sources, and threat motivations
  • Explain their role in protecting their own physical and non-physical computing assets
  • Discuss current events topics and read security articles in the popular press
  • Assess computing actions in the context of security
  • Apply cybersecurity basic best practices and concepts to their declared major or discipline

For example, these majors do not directly relate to cybersecurity, but professionals in these fields would benefit their organizations having cybersecurity knowledge:

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

  • Agricultural & Life Sciences Education
  • Agricultural Business
  • Agricultural Studies
  • Agricultural Systems Technology
  • Industrial Technology
  • International Agriculture

Ivy College of Business

  • Accounting
  • Actuarial Science
  • Business Analytics
  • Finance
  • International Business
  • Management
  • Supply Chain Management

College of Design

  • Community & Regional Planning
  • Industrial Design

College of Human Sciences

  • Early Childhood Education
  • Early Childhood Education & Programming
  • Elementary Education
  • Event Management
  • Family & Consumer Sciences Education & Studies
  • Financial Counseling & Planning
  • Hospitality Management

College of Liberal Arts and Studies

  • Bioinformatics & Computational Biology
  • Criminal Justice
  • Data Science
  • Economics
  • Journalism & Mass Communication
  • Mathematics
  • Political Science
  • Public Relations
  • Statistics
  • Technical Communication