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Network Security

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Network Security

This course provides students with a rigorous, hands-on foundation in securing modern network environments. It examines the security properties of the TCP/IP protocol stack from link-level to application-level and equips students to identify, analyse, and counter real-world network attacks, including threats to confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Main Topics
  • Introduction to Network Security
  • Main network attacks and tools
  • Security protocols in TCP/IP
  • Secure network configuration

The General Competences that students should have acquired include:

  • Adapting to new application contexts and situations
  • Decision-making by working independently and teamwork
  • Working in an international environment
  • Thinking out of the box with creative to identify and configure usefulness services or approaches

The program is structured to integrate contemporary interdisciplinary knowledge with effective and efficient application, aiming to equip students with skills essential for the modern job market in Greece and internationally, thus enhancing their career prospects.

Based on the above, upon completion of the course, students are expected to be able to:

  • Identify security vulnerabilities in communication networks and perform packet-level threat analysis and interpret attack artefacts (e.g., DoS, ARP spoofing, tampering).
  • Design secure enterprise network architectures supported by defence-in-depth principles under perimeter security mechanisms.
  • Configure secure routing and switching (e.g., user management, VLANs).
  • Enable secure communication protocols (e.g., TLS, IPsec, SSH) .
  • Deploy and fine-tune network-defence mechanisms (e.g., firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPNs), and protect endpoints (e.g., by scanning and closing open ports).

The “Network Security” course develops specific knowledge about secure TCP/IP connections and provides hardening actions in perimeter environments that include interconnection devices (switches, routers) and endpoints, in addition to offering an overview of cyberattacks (under ethical principles and under controlled environments) at the network level and on connected devices.

 

Therefore, students will: (i) assess the relevance of security measures at the network level through direct experimentation with cyberattacks; (ii) understand the importance of activating determined TCP/IP security protocols such as TLS or IPSec; and (iii) learn methods to ensure system hardening and prevent threats. In other words, this course enables students, upon successful completion, to prevent attacks by selecting and configuring defensive measures that guarantee system security and secure connectivity between peers.

 

Upon completion of this course, the students will be able to:

  • Become aware of the existence of fundamental interconnection elements for the connectivity, and their main security issues
  • Understand the evolution of TCP/IP to integrate security protocols
  • Discover the spectrum of security threats in terms of networks and connected devices, including operating system security weaknesses
  • Experiment cyber-attacks in networks following the good practices, and analyse effects and consequences
  • Identify, select, and adapt the appropriate security services (e.g., TLS, IPSec) and/or configurations to ensure secure peer-to-peer connectivity
  • Understand the importance of hardening measures in terms of network perimeter and end devices
  • Know how to design and implement secure networks based on fundamental components, such as virtual private networks, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, as well as deception systems

Students will be able to:

  • Architect resilient network topologies that meet confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA) objectives.
  • Address network-level vulnerabilities and attacks to understand network security monitoring and response workflows.
  • Lead blue-team operations to monitor, detect and respond to advanced network intrusions.

Guide junior analysts in applying secure-configuration baselines and hardening techniques