cyber security fundamentals

Explore the basics of the cyber security field, its market size, and daily attacks, while clarifying terminology and mapping paths to become a real cyber security professional.

Explore the global overview of cyber security, its definition, and statistics about cyber attacks to illustrate risks; identify how cyber assets across IT, OT, and IoT, including SCADA, are protected.

Explore essential cybersecurity statistics on malware development, data breaches, cryptojacking, mobile threats, and small business attacks, highlighting daily malware samples, detection timelines, and losses from cyber attacks.

Explore the cybersecurity market size, its three sectors, and how tools like firewalls, antiviruses, and siem, plus skills and professional demand, shape security and financial losses from attacks.

Explore the debate around cybersecurity versus cyber security, including spelling variations, definitions, and the relationship to information security in the tech world.

Learn the differences between cyber security and information security, distinguishing data versus information, and explore how the CIA triad—confidentiality, integrity, availability—applies to protecting information across digital and analog forms.

Explore the cybersecurity pathway, including university degrees, certifications roadmap, and non-linear routes into cybersecurity engineering, emphasizing transferable IT knowledge and growing demand.

Explore a US-focused cybersecurity career roadmap from entry-level feeder roles to advanced positions, with salary expectations from 85k to 130k and insights on demand, shortages, and growth.

Explore red team and blue team roles and map a certification roadmap from beginner to expert, featuring OSCP, certified ethical hacker, GSEC, CySA+, certified information systems security professional, and CCNA.

Explore the hacker mindset, categorize hackers by type and motivation, map the cyber security kill chain, review hacking techniques, and compare categories of malicious software.

Explore hacker categories from white hat to nation-sponsored actors, including gray, blue, red hats, script kiddies, green hats, hacktivists, and insiders, with examples like DDoS and social engineering.

Examine hackers' motivations to attack networks as IoT devices grow from 15 billion in 2015 to 75 billion by 2025, and highlight home cameras and company IPs to correct vulnerabilities.

With the rise of IoT devices, hackers pursue financial gain, intellectual challenge, and political or social reasons, including data breaches for identity theft, ransom demands, and hacktivism.

Explore the five phases of the cyber security kill chain—reconnaissance, compromising the system, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and covering tracks—plus external reconnaissance, social engineering, phishing, and network scanning with Nmap.

Explore lateral movement techniques, including network mapping, port scanning, evading alerts, and data exfiltration; study privilege escalation such as DLL injection and UAC bypass.

Explore the cyber security kill chain and how social engineering exploits the human factor using psychological manipulation, with techniques like phishing, scareware, baiting, and pretexting.

Explore how social engineering exposes victims and enables system access, and review key techniques like keyloggers, eavesdropping, clickjacking, DDoS, and trojans.

Explore main malware types—virus, worm, Trojan, spyware, ransomware, and bot or zombie machines—and how viruses replicate, worms spread via networks, and Trojans provide backdoors.

Explore spyware that tracks browsing habits and sells data, ransomware that encrypts files and demands payment, and botnets used for DDoS attacks and hacker motivations.

Explore cyber security standards and laws for red team and blue team professionals, including ISO 27001, NIST CSF and RMF, PCI DSS, and global laws across the US, EU, and Australia.

Explore ISO 27001 and ISMS framework for information security through risk management and the PDCA cycle. Understand documentation requirements, controls, and the CIA triad, and how certification drives continuous improvement.

Explore NIST's cyber security framework and risk management framework, including the five functions identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover, guiding data protection and continual security improvements.

Learn about the PCI-DSS, the payment card industry data security standard, its four compliance levels, and how restricting and monitoring cardholder data protects customers and prevents online fraud.

Explore the PCI-DSS framework and its 12 requirements for handling cardholder data, including secure networks, encryption, vulnerability management, access control, and ongoing monitoring.

Examine how cyber security laws shape global regulation, with examples from the US, the EU, and Australia, focusing on domestic security requirements, national defense, and criminalization of cyber activity.

Explore cyber security laws across the United States, European Union, and Australia, including critical infrastructure standards, foreign investment reviews, data privacy, and criminalization of cyber activity.

Explore global standards for information security, including ISO twenty seven oh one, NIST, and PCI-DSS, and review cybersecurity laws across the United States, the European Union, and Australia.