Program Overview

The Associate of Applied Science in Cybersecurity at Texas Business School is a two-year, workforce-focused technology program designed to prepare students with the academic foundation, technical knowledge, practical competencies, analytical ability, and professional skills required to support organizational cybersecurity operations.

Students develop knowledge and practical skills in computer and network security, operating systems, vulnerability management, security monitoring, cloud security, identity management, digital investigation, cybersecurity governance, risk assessment, information assurance, incident response, and cyber resilience.

Through instructor-led instruction, cybersecurity laboratories, network and systems security labs, security operations simulations, cloud security labs, digital forensics exercises, applied industry projects, and a culminating capstone project, students gain hands-on experience configuring systems, analyzing network traffic, identifying vulnerabilities, investigating alerts, evaluating security controls, automating selected security activities, and documenting technical findings.

The program places a strong emphasis on authorized and responsible security practice, protection of information, evidence-based decision making, professional documentation, practical problem solving, and understanding cybersecurity as both a technical and organizational discipline.

Program Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the program, graduates will be able to explain fundamental principles of cybersecurity, information assurance, computing, networking, operating systems, and enterprise information systems and analyze computer and network architectures to identify security requirements, vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, and appropriate safeguards.

Graduates will be able to configure and administer Windows and Linux systems using secure practices; explain network protocols, addressing, routing, switching, wireless networking, network services, and secure communications; and implement network-security controls including firewalls, segmentation, access controls, secure protocols, intrusion detection, and monitoring technologies.

Graduates will be able to apply cybersecurity principles involving confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, accountability, least privilege, separation of duties, defense-in-depth, and Zero Trust. They will also be able to develop basic scripts for authorized cybersecurity administration, perform vulnerability assessments, apply ethical-hacking methodologies in controlled environments, analyze security logs, triage alerts, investigate suspicious activity, and document technical findings.

Graduates will be able to apply identity and access-management controls, fundamental cloud and virtualization security controls, digital-forensics principles, cybersecurity governance and risk-management practices, auditing and compliance principles, and cryptographic concepts involving encryption, hashing, digital signatures, certificates, secure communications, and key management.

Graduates will also be able to participate in incident-response activities, develop business-continuity and disaster-recovery recommendations, analyze enterprise security architectures, prepare professional cybersecurity documentation, communicate cybersecurity risks and recommendations to technical and nontechnical audiences, and complete an integrated enterprise cybersecurity project demonstrating practical competence.

What You’ll Learn

Cybersecurity Foundations

Students develop a foundation in cybersecurity terminology, principles, threats, controls, architectures, information assurance, risk concepts, professional responsibilities, and security policies. The curriculum introduces cybersecurity as an organizational discipline involving people, processes, technology, governance, policy, physical protection, and risk management.

Networking & Systems Security

Students learn networking fundamentals, IP addressing, subnetting, routing, switching, network services, packet analysis, wireless networking, and network troubleshooting. They also develop practical skills in Windows and Linux administration, account management, permissions, services, patch management, host firewalls, logs, and security hardening.

Network Security & Secure Communications

Students learn how to secure enterprise network infrastructure through firewalls, access-control rules, network segmentation, VPNs, secure protocols, wireless security, intrusion detection, traffic monitoring, and secure remote access. Laboratory activities emphasize configuration and analysis within authorized training environments.

Cybersecurity Scripting & Automation

Students develop introductory Python and command-line scripting skills for authorized cybersecurity tasks. Training includes log parsing, security-data filtering, system-information collection, file processing, automation, error handling, debugging, and cybersecurity administration.

Security Operations & Threat Detection

Students develop practical skills in security monitoring, log analysis, alert triage, threat detection, event investigation, threat intelligence, and security documentation. Security operations simulations include SIEM exercises, security dashboards, authentication analysis, network and endpoint investigations, detection rules, SOC ticket documentation, and escalation simulations.

Ethical Hacking & Vulnerability Assessment

Students learn authorized vulnerability-assessment and ethical-hacking methodologies from a defensive-security perspective. Training includes reconnaissance, asset discovery, port scanning, service enumeration, vulnerability scanning, controlled validation, remediation, retesting, and professional vulnerability reporting.

Identity & Access Management

Students learn authentication, authorization, account lifecycle management, privileged access, federation, multi-factor authentication, role management, access reviews, and identity governance. Practical activities include user and group provisioning, access-control configuration, privileged-account exercises, and authentication-log analysis.

Cloud, Virtualization & Infrastructure Security

Students develop knowledge of cloud computing, virtualization, virtual networks, cloud identities, workloads, storage, applications, containers, and data protection. Laboratory activities include virtual-machine deployment, identity and role configuration, access policies, security groups, logging, monitoring, cloud misconfiguration assessment, and backup and recovery exercises.

Digital Forensics & Cyber Investigation

Students learn how to identify, preserve, collect, examine, analyze, and document digital evidence. Practical exercises include chain-of-custody documentation, hash verification, forensic imaging simulations, filesystem analysis, metadata analysis, deleted-file exercises, log investigation, timeline construction, evidence correlation, and forensic reporting.

Governance, Risk, Compliance & Auditing

Students examine cybersecurity governance, risk management, policy, compliance, privacy, and auditing. They develop skills in risk assessment, risk-register development, security-policy development, control mapping, audit planning, evidence review, compliance analysis, remediation planning, and management reporting.

Incident Response & Cyber Defense

Students develop practical competence in incident response, threat hunting, evidence correlation, containment, recovery, and cyber-defense operations. Laboratory activities include incident triage, evidence collection, log correlation, threat hunting, compromise analysis, containment simulation, recovery planning, incident documentation, and post-incident review.

Data Security & Cryptography

Students examine data-security controls, cryptographic technologies, secure communications, key management, certificates, and privacy-conscious information handling. Practical activities include hashing, file-integrity verification, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, certificate examination, digital signatures, secure communications, and key-management scenarios.

Business Continuity & Cyber Resilience

Students learn how organizations identify critical operations, evaluate disruption impacts, establish recovery priorities, design recovery strategies, test plans, and maintain essential services during and after cyber incidents or other disruptions. Training includes business-impact analysis, recovery objectives, backup strategies, continuity planning, disaster-recovery planning, tabletop exercises, and resilience assessment.

Enterprise Cyber Defense Capstone

The program concludes with a 90-hour capstone in which students work individually or in approved teams within an authorized simulated enterprise environment. Students assess cybersecurity requirements, identify assets and risks, configure protective controls, perform vulnerability assessments, monitor security events, investigate suspicious activity, respond to a simulated incident, develop recovery recommendations, and prepare professional technical and executive documentation.

Career Opportunities

Graduates may pursue entry-level opportunities in cybersecurity operations, information security, network security, systems security, security monitoring, vulnerability management, digital forensics, cloud security, identity and access management, governance, risk, and compliance. Potential career pathways may include cybersecurity support roles, security operations support roles, junior security analyst roles, vulnerability assessment support, network security support, systems security support, digital-forensics support, and other entry-level cybersecurity positions. Graduates may also apply their skills in enterprise technology environments across organizations requiring information protection, risk management, security monitoring, incident response, and cyber-resilience capabilities. Actual job titles, responsibilities, employment requirements, and scope of duties may vary depending on the employer, industry, and work setting.

Admission Requirements

Applicants should possess a High School Diploma or equivalent or meet the applicable admission requirements for associate-degree-level study.

Appropriate college-level reading and writing readiness and mathematics readiness are required as specified by the applicable courses.

International applicants may be required to submit additional documentation in accordance with institutional and regulatory requirements.

View Admission Requirements

Tuition & Study Options

Program Duration

2 Years / 4 Semesters

Study Options

Live Online | On-Campus | Hybrid

Tuition

$12,000