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I'm not sure what degree to do at Uni

So, I am currently doing a BTEC in Computing and IT and my career goal is to be in the cyber security field with my own cyber security business (long way away I know but thats the goal) but I am unsure what to do.
I was originally thinking of just taking a BSc in Computer Science and then going from there career wise, however there are so many options. I could alternatively take a BSc in Cyber Security but I feel that would be limiting, or a BSc in computer science and then a MSc in computer science or a BSc in computer science and then a MSc in cyber security.

So many options and I'm not quite sure which would be most beneficial to me. Of course there is also the problem of knowing nothing about business yet I want to own my own.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated
You could enjoy yourself!, there are basically two routes

A) "naked" computer science: focus on the origins and future generic computing as an abstract science/maths which will spend at least one module on security, and hopefully several on QKD & QSC.

B) applied computer science: which will focus on more real-world applications today, security, gaming, game-design, AR/VR etc - which should spend at least one module on the origins and future generic computing, and loads more on security - but at what level?

both probably eventually get you where you wish to go!
You'd also have to read more widely, see what the "ethical Hackerz" are up to by following e.g. (randomly chose the 26th Chaos Conference)
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/day_2009-12-27.en.html (Chrome might help with all the German)


(Oh and one thing that helped me assess all cyber-security related documents that I saw for "bullish!tness" , was to mentally replace each and every occurrence on the page of the paper/policy/proposal of the buzzword "cyber" with an equally silly word, "squirrel"

this, for me, defocussed the page/paper/policy/prospectus from a highly relevant buzzword laden state of the art mystery thing, to something that was a lot easier to evaluate if the author/authors actually were writing prose or fiction!

and I attended at least one Security meeting of the Technical Committee for 'squirrel'-security at an/the international standards development board for telecommunications in Sophia Antipolis, France.

as to the benefit of running your own company in cyber-sec?, hmm, nope - I don't know anyone who really does that, other than as a sort of cover for who they might really have worked for in the past. A lot of shyness, professionally, when you get deep into scarfing of data using MITRE structured threat models and traffic staining & data recognition technologies of the entire internet [ref:1]. Very big business interests, but yes, maybe room for start-ups too. Do some Modules in Business & start-ups.

back to "guidance" here's some lightly anonymised squirrel-security professionals at a conference, just for an idea, but this is if you wish to go the Master & potentially Doctoral route. It's quite usual to do these higher studies whilst sponsored by a large firm or [ref:2], at least partly, it can be a long & rewarding career.

Dr. One has a PhD in Mathematics from the University of xxxx, UK. He is currently at the Reliable and Secure Computation Group of the Computer Science Department at the University of xxxx

Dr. Two, is currently living and studying in England. She completed her Msc in Secure Computer Systems from University of xxxx. She is a PhD research student at the University of xxxx. Her primary research areas are computer network security, specially wireless MAC layer security and machine learning techniques for network intrusion detection.

Dr. Three, BSc, MSc, PhD is a lecturer and the programme leader for the MSc Computer Forensic Investigation at the University of xxxx. She obtained a doctorate in Computing with the title: ‘Analysis: Digital Evidence & Identity Theft from the University of xxxx. Her research interests include Digital Forensics, Identity Theft, Online Fraud, Digital Investigation Methodologies and Online Social Networking.

Dr. Four is a counterintelligence specialist with more than two decades experience in various aspects of this field. In the course of his career, he served as an officer in the xxxx Defense Force, the xxxx National Intelligence Service and the xxxx State Security Agency.

Dr. Five was Chief Executive Officer for the xxxx honeypot in the xxxx Institute of Technology xxxx and an advocate for the ethical hacking community.

Dr. Six, BSc, MSc, PhD is a lecturer at the University of xxxx. He received his PhD in Threat Assessment under the context of Information Security . His research interests are in the areas of Information Security, Information Operations, Digital Forensics, Threat Assessment, Profiling and effective computer defence mechanisms


notice that hardly any of these above academics overused the word 'cyber', they are simply typical informatics security professionals, in my view.

[ref1] from a while back, an overview of the sort of acronyms that you'd have to get used to:
https://makingsecuritymeasurable.mitre.org/docs/stix-intro-handout.pdf
["Structured Threat Information eXpression STIX A Structured Language for Cyber Threat Intelligence Information" PDF 300kb from 2013]

[ref2] GCHQ/NCSC have their approved universities & courses, quite widely available, that is also a very valid route by which the UK needs more staff for future protection of the united kingdom, unless it is already too late to save the nation....

more at https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/ncsc-certified-degrees

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