Cybersecurity: Vulnerability Assessment & Pen Testing (VAPT)

Learn how to enable virtualization in BIOS to power your VMware labs, verify virtualization is on via Task Manager, and boot Kali Linux or Metasploitable for secure testing.

Deploy and configure a Metasploitable 2 virtual machine in VMware Workstation for ethical hacking practice, including three network adapters, MSF admin login, and a dry run of the Metasploit framework.

Extract and set up a Windows 11 VM in VMware, allocate 4 GB RAM and 70–80 GB space, and configure network adapters for three labs (Windows victim, Kali attacker, Metasploitable).

Launch and verify connectivity among three virtual machines—Kali, Metasploitable, and Windows—by recording IPs, pinging across hosts, and configuring VMware Workstation network adapters and Windows firewall settings.

Learn why cyber security protects online assets in a digital world, safeguarding bank accounts, confidential data, and critical infrastructure from hackers. Explore the difference between ethical hacking and cyber security.

Explore the five phases of hacking—reconnaissance, scanning, gaining access, maintaining access, and clearing tracks—and how ethical hackers think like thieves to strengthen defenses.

Explore the CIA triad, confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and learn how access controls, digital signatures, and authentication safeguard data privacy and reliability in real-world systems.

Understand how compliance standards govern handling sensitive data. Learn HIPAA, ISO, NIST, and PCI DSS guidelines to protect patient and payment information.

Explore essential cybersecurity terms such as ethical hacking, vulnerabilities, exploits, penetration testing, payloads, zero-day vulnerabilities, social engineering, patches, firewalls, and encryption to build safer systems.

Explore memory injection and buffer overflow as common attack techniques that exploit weak memory management, enabling unauthorized access, privilege escalation, or arbitrary code execution.

Learn how malicious updates compromise software by injecting malware into legitimate updates, causing data breaches and unauthorized access; discover how to safeguard systems with secure update channels and integrity verification.

Address operating system vulnerabilities by identifying flaws, misconfigurations, and outdated software that attackers exploit for unauthorized access and privilege escalation. Regularly update from trusted sources and harden configurations to mitigate risks.

Mitigate supply chain risks by thoroughly vetting suppliers, implementing robust security practices across all stages, and conducting regular audits to ensure secure communication and data protection.

Explore cryptographic vulnerabilities, from weak algorithms and poor key management to insecure protocols and hash functions like MD5 and SHA-1, and learn mitigation strategies to protect confidentiality.

Identify and assess vulnerabilities with scanners and pentesting tools, prioritize by risk, remediate with patches and controls, verify fixes, and monitor and report on ongoing threats to reduce exploitation risk.

Learn how to conduct automated vulnerability scanning within a defined scope, using assessment tools to identify outdated software and misconfigurations, analyze findings, report priorities, remediate, and rescan to validate mitigation.

Explore application security testing, including sast, dast, iast, manual code reviews, pen testing, and security audits, to identify vulnerabilities and protect data.

Explore threat feeds from commercial providers, open source sources, government and public sector sources, isacs, security vendors, forums, blogs, YouTube channels, and research institutions.

Learn how patch management, updates, and hotfixes fix vulnerabilities, keep systems current, and protect against threats; explore how to apply, test, and recover from updates using Windows update settings.

Explore common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) and how unique codes enable easy reference, lookup of vulnerability details, impact, and fixes, maintained by the Mitre Corporation.

Explore how the National Vulnerability Database catalogs CVEs with CVSS scores, reveals security weaknesses, and provides fixes; learn to search, view details, and assess vulnerability risk.

Explore the OWASP top ten, the open web application security project’s guide to the most critical web app risks, including SQL injections and misconfigurations.

Learn to install and start the Nessus vulnerability assessment tool on Kali Linux, configure the service, register with an activation code, and prepare plugins for vulnerability scanning.