LPI Security Essentials (020-100) Complete Course

Explore the fundamentals of cybersecurity, defining threats, vulnerabilities, and risk while comparing information security with information systems security, and introduce CIA triad, the three A's, threat actors, and basic controls.

Explore the three a's of security, authentication, authorization, and accounting, and learn how identity verification, access control, and activity logging protect digital systems.

Master risk mitigation by exploring physical, technical, and administrative controls and their defense-in-depth approach, including access control, encryption, IDS, and regulatory requirements like HIPAA and GDPR.

Identify threat actors across seven types—script kiddies, insider threats, competitors, organized crime, hacktivists, nation-state actors, and supply chain threats—using social engineering, phishing, fingerprinting, service discovery, lateral movement, and data theft.

Explore the diverse roles in cybersecurity, from technicians to the chief information security officer, and learn how teams handle incidents, attribution, and defense.

Explore the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a knowledge base of tactics and techniques used by APTs like APT 28, and learn how threat intelligence informs detection, mitigation, and incident response.

Identify and manage cybersecurity risks by examining risk assessment methodologies, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, and implementing security controls, vulnerability assessments, and incident response processes.

Explore how security assessments—vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, audits, self-assessments, and password analysis—evaluate an organization's security posture within risk analysis and PCIDSS/FSMA contexts, using active and passive methodologies.

Explore security control types: physical, technical, and administrative—and their management, operational, and technical categories, plus preventive, detective, and compensating controls.

Identify vulnerabilities via a vulnerability assessment to understand risk and guide accept, mitigate, transfer, or avoid, using automated tools and three-step process: collect target attributes, analyze differences, and report results.

Identify six core vulnerability identifiers (CVE, NVD, CWE, CAPEC, CPE, and CCE) across tools like Nessus and OpenVAS, with examples such as CVE-2017-0144 and EternalBlue.

Learn to validate vulnerability reports by identifying findings as true positives, false positives, true negatives, or false negatives, and manage exceptions via reconciliation, correlation with logs, and best-practice comparisons.

Explore zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits, how attackers exploit unknown flaws before patches, why antivirus often misses them, and the high-stakes use in espionage and crime.

Learn how attackers use vulnerabilities to perform arbitrary and remote code execution, and how vertical and horizontal privilege escalation grants admin or root access.

Explore the NIST incident response process and apply preparation, detection and analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activity to quickly contain threats and restore operations.

Explore ethical behavior in cybersecurity, including legal, financial implications of digital actions, confidentiality of data, secure communications, and incident response with emphasis on laws, bug bounties, and cloud resilience.

Understand computer security laws guiding penetration testing, and the necessity of written permission, including sections 1029 and 1030 and cloud-provider consent.

Explain privacy versus security within the CIA triad, highlighting encryption, hashing. Summarize GDPR, SOX, GLBA, FISMA, HIPAA, and COSO ERM and their roles in consent and breach notification.

Discover how bug bounty programs crowdsource security testing for software, services, and applications by rewarding ethical hackers to identify and report vulnerabilities within defined scope.

Understand copyright law and intellectual property to protect data in cybersecurity, including open-source licenses, trade secrets, and landmark cases like Waymo v. Uber and Oracle v. Google.

Define data ownership roles—data owner, data steward, data custodian, and privacy officer—and emphasize stakeholder input for data classification. Protect confidential information with controls, encryption, backups, and data handling policies.

Analyze the 2017 Amazon Web Services outage caused by human error, its cascading impact on us-east-1 services, and the critical need for risk management and proper procedures.

Explore malware varieties from viruses, worms, and trojans to ransomware, spyware, rootkits, botnets, and crypto mining; learn identification, symptoms, removal, and prevention across devices and networks.

Learn how viruses, worms, and trojans spread and conceal malicious code, from boot sector and macro viruses to self-replicating worms and remote access trojans.

Learn how ransomware locks files and demands payment, why experts advise against paying, and how backups and security measures prevent costly attacks, illustrated by the 2018 Atlanta case.

Explore how backdoors, logic bombs, and remote access trojans threaten secure coding and network integrity. Learn how Easter eggs introduce vulnerabilities and why patching keeps systems secure.

Identify malware infections by symptoms such as slower performance, frequent crashes or blue screens, hard drive or file access issues, strange icons or file extensions, and antivirus being blocked.

Identify malware symptoms, scan to verify infection, and back up the system before cleanup. Quarantine the device, disable system restore, remediate with safe-mode scans, and schedule updates and end-user training.

Block viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware, spyware, and rootkits with current antivirus and anti-malware tools; patch the operating systems and apps regularly; educate users on safe, encrypted internet surfing.

Demonstrates creating and delivering a simple virus and a remote access trojan, using social engineering, binding techniques, and RAT features to monitor and control a victim machine.

Examine how spam abuses electronic messaging, including open mail relays and SPIM, and how the CAN-SPAM Act enforces standards with the FTC.

Learn how spam filters detect and block unwanted emails using content-based filtering, blacklisting, whitelisting, and Bayesian methods, and secure handling of email attachments through virus scans and encryption.

Explore how impersonation leverages uniforms and trusted identities to gain access during physical and remote assessments, and master elicitation to elicit staff information and actions.

Explore social engineering attacks, including tailgating, piggybacking, shoulder surfing, eavesdropping, and dumpster diving, and learn how to train users to guard against human vulnerabilities.

Identify frauds, scams, and hoaxes as social engineering, including identity theft and invoice scams. Learn to recognize prepending and scareware, verify software legitimacy, and avoid clicking suspicious links.

Train users in security awareness to avoid sharing credentials, shield PINs, apply a clean desk policy, encrypt emails and data, log suspicious events, and follow disposal and web usage guidelines.

Use Phish Insights, a free tool from Trend Micro, to create phishing campaigns that test users and deliver remedial training while analyzing results.

Secure hardware by understanding computer components, IoT risks, trusted computing, and USB, Bluetooth, and RFID protections, and implementing organizational security policies.

Explore the four core computer functions: input, processing, storage, and output, and the hardware that enables them, while learning essential security measures to protect hardware and data.

Explore the security implications of smart devices and the internet of things, and learn best practices such as strong passwords, updates, encryption, access controls, monitoring, and employee education.

Implement trusted computing to strengthen hardware security using TPM and Secure Boot, store keys securely, and ensure devices boot from trusted software while combining antivirus and firewalls.

Explore USB interfaces, types, and connections—from USB-A, USB-B, to USB-C—while learning security best practices to prevent malware, data theft, and network access risks.

Explore types of Bluetooth devices (classic, BLE, dual mode), their connection ranges, and common security risks, including bluejacking, bluesnarfing, bluebugging, and man-in-the-middle, plus best practices to protect devices.

Explore RFID devices, active and passive, NFC, LF, HF, and UHF connections, relay attacks, and encryption and authentication to prevent data theft and unauthorized access.

Explore application security concepts, including securely installing software, managing updates, protecting against unintended network connections, and addressing risks from buffer overflows and SQL injections.

Explore the six software types—firmware, operating systems, desktop and mobile apps, web apps, and server software—and their security considerations, updates, and compatibility for cybersecurity proficiency.

Install applications from legitimate sources, understand licensing, and verify downloads with hash checks for firmware, OS, desktop, mobile, and server software.

Download apps only from official app stores, where hashes verify integrity and security reviews ensure safe software; avoid third-party stores and jailbreaking to reduce malware and security risks.

Update apps to add features or patch bugs and security vulnerabilities; regularly patch firmware and operating systems from trusted sources to prevent attackers exploiting outdated software and insecure defaults.

Explain how a buffer overflow occurs when memory is overrun, spilling data from the stack, and highlight concepts like smashing the stack, nop slide, and ASLR.

Explore security applications like endpoint security, endpoint firewalls, packet filtering firewalls, application layer firewalls, antivirus, anti-malware, and host-based intrusion detection or prevention systems to build defense in depth.

Demonstrates a buffer overflow attack in the C program narnia0.c, overflowing a 20 character buffer to 0xdeadbeef and triggering a shell through crafted input.

Explore how SQL injections exploit user input to run malicious SQL against a database, including login forms, and how input validation and sanitizing data prevent these attacks.

Explore the fundamentals of computer networks, including osi and tcp/ip models, tcp and udp transport, switches and routers, ipv4/ipv6 addressing, dns, routing, and isp roles, with emphasis on security.

Explore essential networking hardware—nics, hubs, switches, wireless access points, routers, firewalls, patch panels, poe, cable and dsl modems, onts, and sdn—and learn how they enable secure data transmission.

Compare the tcp/ip model with the osi model, detailing four layers—network interface, internet, transport, and application—and how the top osi layers form the application layer.

Switches use MAC addresses to improve traffic and security, counter MAC flooding and spoofing with ARP inspections and static MACs; routers use IP addresses with ACLs for defense in depth.

Explore IPv4 addressing, including dotted decimal notation, octets, 32-bit space, subnet masks, classful and CIDR subnetting, private vs public IPs, NAT, and essential IPv4 concepts like loopback and APIPA.

Assign IPv4 addresses by comparing static and dynamic methods, including DHCP, BOOTP, APIPA, and zero config, and configure IP, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS.

Explore how data transfers use ip addresses and ports to route traffic. Compare tcp and udp headers, well-known and ephemeral ports, and how a client-server session uses port 80.

Explore how routers use routing tables and ARP to map IPs to MACs, compare directly connected, static, and dynamic routes, and evaluate route cost and prefix specificity.

Understand the domain name system (dns) concepts, including fully-qualified domain names (fqdn), top-level and second-level domains, internal and external dns, dns records, ttl, and recursive versus iterative lookups.

Identify how internet service providers deliver connectivity using cable and fiber modems, satellite and cellular options, and media converters, with Cat6 and a wireless access point.

Explore wired and wireless network security concepts, threat mitigation, and secure connections. Learn about firewalls, ids/ips, nac, wireless encryption (wpa2/3, aes), and configuring small office networks.

Explore wired network security by examining switches, CAM tables, and MAC filtering to prevent MAC flooding, ARP poisoning, and VLAN exploits while implementing 802.1x, STP, and DHCP snooping.

Protect networks by scanning devices before granting access, quarantining those that fail, and enabling remediation to meet security requirements. Explore persistent, non-persistent, and volatile agent-based NAC approaches.

Explore wireless encryption, comparing WEP, WPA, WPA2, and WPA3, and learn to strengthen passwords, disable WPS, and use a VPN on public wifi for secure connectivity.

Configure a non-personal ssid and enable strongest encryption (prefer WPA3 or WPA2 with AES/CCMP), disable guest access, and use 1,6,11 on 2.4 gigahertz with auto on 5 and 6 gigahertz.

Configure a small office network with a router, focusing on secure placement, firmware updates, DHCP reservations and wide-area network settings, plus content filtering, QoS, UPnP, and DMZ.

Configure a secure small office wireless network by using WPA2 with AES, a strong pre-shared key, disable SSID broadcast, use channels 1, 6, and 11, and turn off WPS.