Course Overview

Course Overview#

CYBERSEC 520: Foundations of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity | Spring 2026

Welcome to the official online course notes for Foundations of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity.

Course Description#

This course explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. We begin by establishing a solid foundation in Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) concepts. From there, we dive into the “Dual Role” of AI:

  1. AI as an Offensive Weapon: Understanding how adversaries use AI to automate attacks and sophisticated social engineering.

  2. AI as a Defensive Shield: Leveraging Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) to detect, prevent, and remediate threats at scale.

What You Will Learn#

  • Foundations: Supervised, Unsupervised, and Reinforcement Learning vocabularies.

  • Data Processing: Cleaning and exploring real-world security datasets (e.g., CICIDS2017).

  • Advanced Techniques: Clustering, Neural Networks, Sequential Models (LSTMs, Transformers), and LLMs.

  • Practical Skills: Hands-on labs building classifiers for Phishing, DDoS, and Malware detection.

How to use this book#

This book is broken down into 8 Modules. You can navigate through them using the sidebar.

  • Assignments: Access all course assignments in the dedicated section.

  • Notebooks: Interactive Jupyter Notebooks are embedded directly into the modules.

  • Navigation: Use the left sidebar to jump between modules. Use the right sidebar to navigate within a page.

Contents