Master's Concentration or Certificate in Cybersecurity
The first graduate cybersecurity program built entirely around you and your goals. Learn 1-on-1 with expert professors. Build a real-world portfolio through agile personalized sprints. Defend systems, advance your career, and graduate ready for the threats of tomorrow.
- 10–18 Months to Complete
- 1-on-1 Expert Professors
- Real-World Portfolio
- 100% Remote & Flexible
- Keep Your Job
A Cybersecurity Program That Puts You First
Traditional programs give everyone the same lectures at the same pace. At Elton, your professors design every sprint around your career goals, your skill level, and the threats shaping your industry right now.
1-on-1 Expert Tutoring
Work directly with cybersecurity professionals — pen testers, SOC architects, GRC leaders — who personalize every session to what you need to learn next. No lecture halls. No falling behind. No holding back.
Agile Personalized Sprints
Forget semesters. Your curriculum is organized into focused two-week sprints that you co-design with your professors. Each sprint is scoped to your interests, your career path, and the real-world security challenges you want to solve.
Skills That Matter
Graduate with deep technical ability and the leadership skills to put it to work — threat modeling, incident command, security policy, stakeholder communication, and team management. Employers see what you can do, not just what courses you sat through.
Study from Anywhere
Meet your professors and coach a few times a week via Zoom, Slack, and chat. Spend the rest of your time building, researching, and working in the real world. Maintain your job. Live anywhere. Learn everywhere.
Accelerated Timeline
Because your curriculum is personalized and 1-on-1 instruction eliminates wasted time, most students complete the M.S. in Cybersecurity in 12 to 18 months. Your prior experience and certifications can accelerate you further.
Career-Integrated Learning
From day one, your coach connects your studies to your professional goals. Elton's network of Industry Contacts ("Icons") opens doors to mentorships, internships, and job opportunities in the security industry.
A 1-on-1 Approach to Cybersecurity Mastery
Elton's tutorial model — inspired by Oxford, reinvented for the modern world — is the backbone of this unique and individualized program. Here's what your journey looks like.
Meet Your Coach
Your personal coach helps you map your cybersecurity career goals, identify skill gaps, and build a custom learning plan. They're your advocate from enrollment to graduation and beyond.
Work 1-on-1 with Professors
Each week you meet with expert professors in focused tutorials of one to three students. Discuss your projects, present your thinking, get real-time feedback, and push your understanding further.
Complete Agile Sprints
Every two weeks, you and your professor co-design a sprint: a focused learning goal with clear deliverables. Harden a network. Draft a security policy. Build a detection rule set. Each sprint is scoped to your pace and priorities.
Develop Mastery
Your sprints build on each other — layering technical depth with strategic thinking. By the time you graduate, you have battle-tested skills and the leadership instincts to apply them under pressure.
Deep Expertise, Personalized to Your Path
There is no one-size-fits-all syllabus. With your professors, you'll build mastery across core cybersecurity domains — choosing the depth and sequence that match your career goals.
Offensive Security & Penetration Testing
Vulnerability discovery, ethical hacking methodologies, red team operations, exploit development, and adversary simulation. Hands-on labs with real tools and environments.
Security Architecture & Engineering
Designing secure systems from the ground up. Network defense, zero-trust architecture, cloud security (AWS, Azure, GCP), identity management, and infrastructure hardening.
Incident Response & Threat Intelligence
Detection, triage, containment, and recovery. SIEM/SOAR tooling, digital forensics, malware analysis, and building actionable threat intelligence programs.
Governance, Risk & Compliance
Risk management frameworks (NIST, ISO 27001), regulatory compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2), security policy development, and audit management for enterprise environments.
Applied Cryptography & Privacy
Symmetric and asymmetric cryptosystems, PKI, secure protocols, post-quantum cryptography, and privacy-enhancing technologies for a data-driven world.
AI Security & Emerging Threats
Securing machine learning pipelines, adversarial AI, deepfake detection, LLM security, IoT/OT security, and anticipating the threat landscape of the next decade.
Learn from Industry Leaders
Elton's cybersecurity faculty are practicing security executives and researchers who bring real-world experience to every 1-on-1 session.
Tolgay Kizilelma, PhD
IT Executive · C-CISO · Associate Professor · ISACA Accredited Trainer
Tolgay Kizilelma is a business leader and trusted security partner with close to 30 years of experience across the full IT spectrum in education, healthcare, research, public sector, and technology. Recognized as one of the Top 100 CISOs of 2022 by CISOs Connect, he is also a speaker, board member, and associate professor. His expertise spans strategy, governance, enterprise risk, compliance, cyber-risk programs, identity and access management, cloud security, privacy, audit, and digital transformation, grounded in frameworks including NIST 800, the ISO 27000 family, CIS, FAIR, and COSO.
He holds more than 30 professional certifications, including CCISO, CISSP, CISM, CISA, CRISC, CGEIT, CDPSE, HCISPP, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, PMP, PgMP, TOGAF, ITIL Master, and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, and is an ISACA accredited trainer for CGEIT, CRISC, CISM, CISA, and COBIT 2019. At Elton, he brings boardroom-level security leadership to students preparing to lead security programs of their own.
Michael Adam, MBA
CEO, ADAM Aerospace · Author, The God Function · Founder, Principia Corvi
Michael Adam works at the intersection of data trust, artificial intelligence, aerospace, defense, and mission-critical systems. As CEO of ADAM Aerospace, he focuses on one fundamental problem: how do we know that the data informing critical decisions is authentic, traceable, and trustworthy? A domain expert in data verification, data provenance, and trusted data infrastructure, he has led the development and deployment of technologies that establish verifiable chains of trust for data across defense, space, autonomous systems, and AI environments.
He is a PhD candidate in Mission-Critical Technology and Security, with research spanning advanced AI security, trusted systems, data sovereignty, space and defense systems, and architectures for separating machine intelligence from operational authority. He is also the author of The God Function, a fiction series exploring AI, science, power, and human agency. At Elton, he helps students build the trust architectures required for an increasingly autonomous world.
Designed for Professionals Who Want More
The Elton Cybersecurity program is built for motivated people who refuse to pause their lives for a degree. Whether you're pivoting, advancing, or going deeper — Elton meets you where you are.
The Career Changer. You're in IT, software, or another technical field and you want to move into security. Your coach and professors will leverage what you already know and build a fast bridge to your first security role.
The Working Professional. You're already in cybersecurity and want a master's credential plus deeper expertise — without quitting your job. Elton's flexible schedule and recognition of prior learning make that possible.
The Entrepreneur. You want to build a security consultancy, a product, or a startup. Your sprints can focus on both the technical and business sides of cybersecurity, tailored to your venture.
Schedule an Admission Conversation
Graduate Ready to Lead
A Recognized Credential
Elton University is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution committed to providing the highest quality education for everyone. Your graduate certificate in Cybersecurity represents rigorous, hands-on mastery of the field. Use your credential to advance your career, apply for senior roles, or launch your own security practice.
Stacking Credentials
We're built for life's realities, not against them. Complete your graduate certificate first, then continue straight into your Master's — every course you finish carries forward, so nothing goes to waste and no step is wasted time. Finish the full path and earn your M.S., knowing each milestone along the way is a real, standalone credential in its own right.
Technical Depth and Strategic Range
You'll leave Elton able to operate at both ends of the cybersecurity spectrum — hands on a keyboard triaging an incident and in a boardroom advising executives on risk posture. That combination is what separates senior security leaders from the rest of the field.
A Network for Life
When you enroll at Elton, you join a community of diverse, ambitious professionals — students, alumni, coaches, professors, and Industry Contacts. This growing network spans cities and industries, and it's yours for life.
- 10–18 Months to Complete
- 1-on-1 Expert Tutoring
- 100% Remote & Flexible
- 2-Week Agile Sprints
Eligibility
To enroll in a master's program or graduate certificate, you need one of the following:
- A bachelor's degree, or
- Some college and 5 years of relevant work experience, or
- Proof of your ability to engage in master's-level study.
No standardized tests are required: no GRE, no GMAT.
Tuition & Scholarships
The national average for an equivalent program in the USA is $21,000. At Elton, your entire team is included in your tuition, at prices competitive with the best online cybersecurity programs. Most of our students also receive financial aid.
- Start Immediately - Other programs require you wait until September or January to start. With Elton you can start immediately.
- No Risk First Month - If during the first month you or Elton decide that you are not a fit for the college, you will receive a full refund.
- Stacking Credentials - If you stop the program early, you still earn your graduate certificate in cybersecurity if you have completed 1/3 of the program.
Program Tuition: $18,000
Enjoy a 10% discount if tuition is paid in full upon enrollment. The tuition for this program is scheduled to rise January 1st 2027 to $22,000.
Spare Time
18 months
10 Hours/Week
- Access to Elton Community
- 1x Professional Coach
- 1x Professor
- Full-Time employment allowed if it dovetails with your studies
Part Time
12 months
15 Hours/Week
- Access to Elton Community
- 1x Professional Coach
- 2x Professors
- Full-Time employment allowed if aligned with curriculum
- Part-Time employment allowed
Accelerated
10 months
25 Hours/Week
- Access to Elton Community
- 1x Professional Coach
- 3x Professors
- Full-Time employment allowed if aligned with curriculum
Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity
Prefer a shorter commitment? Earn the graduate certificate on its own, with the same 1-on-1 professors and coaching as the master's.
- 12 credits, one third of the master's (about 300 hours of engagement)
- Typically about 2.5–6 months, depending on your pace
- Credits stack: continue any time to finish the full master's degree
Full Refund During a 30 Day Trial Period
