Cyber Security Student Project Ideas: What Will You Create While in College?

Naturally, you want to earn good grades in your cyber security degree program, not only so you can pass courses and fulfill requirements for scholarships and grants, but to be able to claim a decent grade point average on your resume. More than that, the projects you work on in class could also go into a portfolio used to demonstrate your skill level and talents. 

For instance, creating or participating in student projects can display your creativity, versatility, and comprehension of the subject matter you're studying. If you're considering enrolling in a cyber security program, you should look into one with classes that give you the opportunity to develop special projects.

Here are some typical cyber security projects that might work in your classes.

1. Deleted Files: Can You Ever Retrieve Them?

We've all been there: Hit the delete button by accident, and the file we've just been working on for hours is inadvertently gone. But is it gone forever? You hope not. On the other hand. you may have some emails you probably shouldn't have written, or some pictures you probably shouldn't have shared on the computer, and you'd like some assurance they are absolutely deleted. So what's the deal when it comes to deleting? The answer is that it depends.

Files are stored in the hard drive in multiple sections, known as clusters, Your project could be to come up with illustrations and diagrams that show the many places files and pieces of files may be stored, and so illustrate the complexity of totally removing files from a computer, as well as the challenges of recovering them. You can also report on the use of data recovery tools that are used in cyber security. Another facet of your project might be to investigate the process of overwriting or file shredding, which involves writing over a file to keep it secret.

2. Are Security Questions Really Secure?

Typical security questions to retrieve or change a password include these: What's your mother's maiden name? Or, what elementary school did you attend? It may be that the answers to these and other personal questions are available online and thieves can find the information in order to break into your bank accounts, credit cards, and other vital accounts.

You can conduct a project where you compare how secure people think their information is with how easy it may be to find it. First, you might want to conduct a survey, say, among your classmates or friends and family, asking them how secure they think their information is when they have different passwords for every website and they have to answer certain questions when they change their password. Then, you can make a study of the various ways thieves might go about finding the answers: looking on social media, guessing, Googling a family tree website, or looking up government records are just some of the ways.

3. Password Hacks: How Easy Are They?

If you're interested in cyber security, you're probably savvy enough to know it's not wise to use the same password for all your web accounts; nor is it wise to use an easy-to-guess password. But just how easy is it to guess a password? You can conduct a cyber security project and find out. Using the computer language Python, you can write a simple password guesser and evaluate how difficult sample passwords are to guess.

4. Hacking a Computer Not Connected to the Internet.

This will scare your classmates, if they don't already know about it, but it's a fact that even when a computer is not connected to the internet, it can transmit data through heat, vibrations, sound, and light. For this project, you will research how a hacker can steal information by means of a smartphone from an "air-gapped" computer not connected to the internet.

5. Blocking RFID readers.

The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on credit or debit cards can be read as they are used by computers located a short distance away -- say, from a car lurking in a parking lot when you use your card at the ATM. Your college project might involve identifying the kinds of materials that will block an RFID reader and designing a solution to mask your cards' RFIDs.

Can’t wait to try out your own cyber security projects? If you want to earn a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer and Information Science with a Major in Cyber and Network Security - Cybersecurity Track, ECPI University offers this degree program. For more information, connect with a friendly ECPI University admissions advisor.

It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

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