The Cyber Security Series: Introduction to Cyber Security

Protect computer systems and devices from damage and compromise, recover and restore corrupted systems before and after a hack, and uncover and mitigate system vulnerabilities.

Explore the difference between cyber security and information security, focusing on protecting computer systems versus all forms of information, and examine the CIA triad of confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Learn how cyber security protects information from attacks, the need for security plans and defense strategies in organizations, and the importance of training employees to avoid human vulnerabilities.

Explore the CIA triad—confidentiality, integrity, and visibility—and how they protect information by restricting access to authorized users, keeping it away from unauthorized personnel, and preserving accuracy and completeness.

Define privacy as a state where others know you but not your actions; illustrate with chats. Contrast anonymity as when no one knows who you are or what you did.

Protect your privacy by avoiding rogue access points in public wifi, evaluating the websites you click, using a VPN, and browsing in incognito mode to shield your browser history.

Discover strategies to stay anonymous online by managing app permissions, using the Tor browser, enabling ad blocking, encrypting and backing up data, and using temporary emails, DuckDuckGo, and virtual machines.

Explore cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities, including viruses, worms, trojans, adware, spyware, keyloggers, scareware, and ransomware, and learn how each malware type compromises systems and data.

Identify cybersecurity terms and their meanings, including authentication, backdoors, rootkits, brute force attacks, clickjacking, cyberbullying, denial of service and distributed denial of service attacks, exploits, and the internet of things.

Define hacking as gaining access to something you do not have. Explain ethical hacking as using hacking knowledge to find vulnerabilities that threaten organizational security, and discuss types of hackers.

Identify five hacker types: white hat experts who find vulnerabilities, blackhat criminals seeking unauthorized access, grey hat hackers, script kiddies, and hacktivists who target governments.

Explore the five phases of a cyber attack: reconnaissance (footprint), scanning or enumeration, gain access, maintain access, and cover tracks.

Explore footprinting and reconnaissance, among five phases, distinguishing active and passive information gathering from target to assess security levels and reveal vulnerabilities via search engines, Google hacking, and social engineering.

Learn how scanning and enumeration identify network vulnerabilities by mapping networks, listing hosts and services, and exposing routing information and open ports.

Explore how attackers gain access by exploiting vulnerabilities found during reconnaissance and scanning. Maintain access with backdoors, rootkits, and trojans, and cover tracks to avoid detection.

Protect yourself from cyber attacks by avoiding rogue access points, using strong passwords, encrypting data, and staying vigilant against suspicious emails with attachments and links.

Understand how a web application operates when a web server hosts it, users access it via a browser, and front-end navigation plus back-end processing manage interactions.

Explore how hackers target web applications by exploiting common vulnerabilities, and review a few key vulnerabilities in this introductory module.

Explains cross-site scripting (XSS), a web injection attack driven by weak input validation, allowing malicious scripts to access cookies, session tokens, and browser data, echoing its long-standing prevalence across websites.

Explore the three main types of cross-site scripting—reflected cross-site scripting, stored process scripting, and DOM process scripting—and how inputs reflect on pages or are stored on servers.

Explore SQL injection vulnerabilities in web applications, where attackers inject malicious code to access databases and reveal stored data such as usernames and passwords.

Learn how web parameter tampering allows attackers to manipulate prices and user data in web applications. Protect with input validation, a WAF, encrypted session cookies, and limited query parameters.

Explore sensitive information disclosure in web apps, including leakage of company data, user data, usernames, emails, and passwords, and how hackers exploit it to gather information and aid attacks.

Study denial of service and distributed denial of service attacks that flood a system and render it unavailable. Distinguish between dos and ddos: single machine vs multiple machines.

Explore authentication bypass, a web application vulnerability where hackers bypass login protections—passwords, usernames, emails, captcha, or otp-based two-factor authentication. Learn how attackers gain access by collecting credentials.