Deakin’s Graduate Certificate of Cyber Law delivers skills for tackling legal challenges in the digital world.
In a world that’s increasingly driven by digital data, laws that revolve around the activities and transactions in cyberspace – or the internet – play a crucial role.
Commencing in T1 2020, Deakin University’s new Graduate Certificate of Cyber Law offers students with a unique opportunity to develop technical skills in both cyber law and information technology.
The course will provide graduates with a wide range of benefits and enhance skill sets for all types of careers that deal with cyber-harms, regulatory issues or data security.
Deakin Law School senior lecturer, and course director for Graduate Certificate of Cyber Law, Dr Vicki Huang says the innovative program addresses current and evolving challenges of the 21st century digital world.
‘We are headed towards the fifth industrial revolution where the most valuable asset is data: who owns it, what can be done with it, and what can be done to remedy or stop potential harms done with, and to, our personal data,’ she explains.
Dr Huang teaches cyber law, intellectual property law, and property (land) law and her research focuses on inter-disciplinary studies of law and empirical research methods in law. Currently, she’s working on projects linked to intellectual property, big data, free speech, race and gender.
With key critical thinking skills embedded into the Graduate Certificate of Cyber Law, Dr Huang says there’s high demand for graduates who have combined competencies in cyber security and legal expertise.
‘The ability to ask informed questions to challenge the status quo is one thing that people need to contribute in an increasingly automated world,’ she explains.
‘This is a highly industry-relevant course. For example, lawyers (or non-IT professionals) working in an IT space need to be able to understand the basics of coding and IT to make credible decisions and advise their IT clients. Likewise, IT professionals (or non-legal professionals) need to understand the legal parameters which often restrict and define the scope of what technology can offer. Graduates with both a legal and IT understanding can make a valuable contribution to all types of industries.’
The course is tailored to meet the market need for both legal specialists in cyber security and cyber professionals with legal expertise, and it introduces students to both disciplines (law and IT) through an integrated set of studies (comprising of four credit points) which can be taken part-time over one year.
‘Graduates will emerge with enhanced critical thinking skills and a solid grounding in the basics of law and IT that will enable them to tackle the cyber-related challenges faced by professional service firms, IT, business and government organisations,’ says Dr Huang.