Cyber security lack of skills continues to create many challenges and implications for organizations. The skills gap can be addressed through training and certification to enhance employee education.
The talent shortage and many specialized areas in cybersecurity have inspired many to retrain and join the industry. One way to gain more knowledge is to take advantage of online learning opportunities. Below you can find a list of free online cybersecurity courses that can help you further your career.
Cryptography I
Stanford University
Instructor: Dan Bonnet, Professor
U this course you will learn about the inner workings of cryptographic systems and how to properly use them in real applications. The course begins with a detailed discussion of how two parties sharing a shared secret key can securely communicate when a strong adversary is eavesdropping and intercepting the traffic. You will study many deployed protocols and analyze errors in existing systems. The second half of the course discusses public key techniques that allow two parties to generate a shared secret key. During the course, participants will encounter many exciting open problems in the field and work on additional programming projects.
DDoS attacks and defenses
University of Colorado
Instructor: C. Edward Chow, Professor
U this course you will learn the history of DDoS attacks, analyze Mirai IoT malware, and perform source code analysis. You will learn about the intrusion-resilience paradigm with proxy-based multipath routing for DDoS protection. By designing and deploying such a new security mechanism, you can improve system performance and reliability at the same time, and it doesn’t have to be just an overhead. By the end of this course, you should be able to analyze emerging DDoS malware, gather forensic evidence, deploy firewall features to reduce the impact of DDoS on your system, and develop strategies to combat future DDoS attacks.
Hardware security
University of Maryland
Teacher: Gan Qu, Associate Professor
U this course, you will study security and trust from a hardware perspective. Upon completion of the course, students will understand the weaknesses in today’s digital systems design flow and the physical attacks against these systems. They will learn that security starts with hardware design and learn the tools and skills to build secure and reliable hardware.
Software security
University of Maryland
Instructor: Michael Hicks, Professor
This course we explore the fundamentals of software security. You’ll learn about software vulnerabilities and the attacks that exploit them, and explore defenses that prevent or mitigate these attacks, including advanced software testing and analysis techniques. It is important to note that you will follow a “security by design” mentality, looking at techniques at each phase of the development cycle that can be used to strengthen the security of software systems. Successful learners of this course will typically have completed a second/junior level undergraduate degree in a technical field, have some programming experience, ideally in C/C++ and one other “managed” programming language (such as ML or Java), and have previous experience to algorithms.
Web Security Basics
KU Leuven University
Instructor: Philippe De Ric, founder of Pragmatic Web Security
This course provides an overview of the most common attacks and illustrates the basic countermeasures that every web application should implement. Throughout the course, you’ll gain an understanding of the threats facing today’s web applications. You will gain an understanding of common attacks and countermeasures; not only in theory but also in practice. You will be provided with an overview of current best practices for securing web applications. Although this course does not require any prior knowledge of security, it will provide an introduction to basic web application concepts including HTTP, HTML, and JavaScript.
Security management and compliance
University of California, Irvine
Instructor: Jacob Horn, Cyber Security Consultant
U this course, students are introduced to the field of cyber security with an emphasis on the area of security and risk management. Topics include the basic concepts and objectives of cybersecurity (the CIA triad), security management design, the NIST cybersecurity framework, relevant laws and regulations, and the role of policies, strategies, and procedures in managing cybersecurity.
Windows Server Management and Security
University of Colorado
Instructor: Greg Williams, Director of Networking and Infrastructure
This course explores what it takes to design and build a Windows backend in an enterprise environment. This course will cover everything from installing Windows Server to configuring users to hardening the server operating system itself. The first week of this course provides an overview of how Windows works in an enterprise environment and what it might look like in the real world. Week 2 will show you how Windows users interact with the system. Week 3 will explore authorization in a Windows environment. Week 4 explores Windows’ built-in security features and demonstrates how to use each technology effectively and under what circumstances you would use which technology for which purpose.
