Salford students to brainstorm tackling issues of national security in new module with the Ministry of Defence

The Hacking for Ministry of Defence (H4MoD) module will put students into a real-life national security and defence scenario and encourage them to work as a team to develop solutions to respond to the problem within a timeframe.

It will be delivered by university staff, based on training and materials from the Common Mission Project, who work in partnership with the MoD to identify scenarios for the module that are faced routinely by the UK intelligence community.

Launching this month, the module will be attended by students from our MA/PgDip Intelligence and Security Studies and MA/PgDip Terrorism and Security courses. The university is the only higher education partner offering the module in the North West.

Dr Christopher J Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies at the University of Salford said: “This module will provide our students with the chance to get hands-on, real-life learning from tackling a real problem that the intelligence and defence community would regularly deal with.

“When we first heard about it, I thought it was a brilliant idea and have been very keen to bring it to Salford as there are very few opportunities to present our students with meaningful in-work experience of supporting national security. We’re very excited about it as we have heard nothing but praise from other universities who have been benefiting from having this module.

“I’ve no doubt that it will be very attractive for our students as it will be integral for their career development.”

Dr Rachael Kelly, Executive Director, Common Mission Project UK said: “We are delighted to have the University of Salford joining us for the first time to run our H4MoD course this spring. At Common Mission Project, we aim to deliver what we call Mission Driven Entrepreneurship™. To do this, we work with universities like the University of Salford to inspire students to be the next generation of purpose-led entrepreneurs and leaders, to change our world for the better. We wish the new cohort of students every success in this module and can’t wait to see what they accomplish over the next ten weeks.”

Since 2019, the module has been run by 13 different universities with hundreds of students taking part in the exercises. It is based on the Hacking for Defence (H4D) programme initially developed at Stanford University.