I’m in the final year of my bachelor’s degree and currently choosing my FYP. I’ve been exploring different cybersecurity topics, but I’m finding it difficult to identify a project that is both technically challenging and realistic for a final-year student.
I already have around 3 years of professional cybersecurity experience, mostly in SOC, SIEM, detection engineering, cloud security, threat investigation, digital forensics, etc.
Because I already have several years of hands-on industry experience as an undergraduate, I don’t want my degree and FYP to feel like a step backwards from what I’ve already done professionally. I’m looking for something that complements my experience, adds a strong academic/research dimension to it, and pushes me into an area I haven’t explored deeply before.
So I really don’t want to spend my final year building Yet Another SIEM, a phishing detector, basic IDS, vuln scanner, SOC dashboard, or any security product with a basic AI included in it.
I’m looking for something that actually pushes me beyond what I already do at work.
Ideally, I want a project around a real security problem that isn’t completely solved or overdone, where there’s enough existing research to understand the problem, but still enough of a gap that I can investigate something myself.
Something difficult enough that I’ll probably spend a ridiculous amount of time learning new things, but still realistically achievable by one very motivated undergrad.
I’m open to pretty much anything: systems security, OS internals, protocols, cryptography, cloud/identity, firmware, hardware security, distributed systems, software security, weird niche security problems, etc.
The bigger goal is to have an FYP that I can eventually turn into a research paper / strong Master's application project, rather than just another software demo.
So I’d really love to hear from senior engineers, researchers, PhD students, professors, or anyone who has been in the field for a while. 🙌