This resource serves as an index to some of the most popular cybersecurity courses available online today. These classes include a combination of beginner and advanced courses, as well as cybersecurity theory and more tactical topics like certification preparation. Some of the most popular cybersecurity online courses from today’s leading online education providers are included in this guide.
Cybersecurity Courses Online: Are they a Good Fit?
Yes will always be the answer. What is the explanation for this? At each stage of your cybersecurity career, online cybersecurity education can help. If you’re just getting started in cybersecurity, or if you’re still in school and considering a cybersecurity degree, some of these freely available cybersecurity courses can help you learn more about what cybersecurity is, what some of the major challenges it faces, and how to best position yourself within the field. These courses might be useful resources for working professionals transitioning towards cybersecurity. There are also a variety of cybersecurity courses available online that can assist those working in the field of information security in preparing for and taking the next step in their careers. If you’re a working professional, you might be interested in our cybersecurity certification resources in addition to the courses listed below.
Key Considerations When Deciding Between Online Cybersecurity Courses
Overall advantage: The first question you must address is why you are enrolling in an online cybersecurity course in the first place. Is it for the sake of curiosity or for professional advancement? Do you wish to learn new talents or just keep up with the newest fashion trends? Understanding your goals for taking online cybersecurity programmes will help you answer some of the following questions, which all pertain to your total degree of investment. Cost: There is a wide cost spectrum when it comes to online cybersecurity courses. Some are absolutely free, while others can cost hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars. Having a budget in mind will make it easier to decide which courses to take right now and which to save for later. Time commitment: Some of the courses listed below can be completed in a few hours, while others require weeks or even months of dedication. Scheduling: Some of these courses are offered on a rolling basis, which essentially means that you can begin them whenever you like. Others adhere to a more traditional academic schedule with specified start and end dates. The schedule and availability component may play a significant part in your decision-making process, depending on your needs and goals. Verification: Another question to consider is, “What do I gain out of this?” To return to the first question in this list, you must be very clear about your objectives from the start. You don’t need a certificate or letter of accomplishment if you’re taking online cybersecurity courses for enjoyment or simply because you’re curious about the subject. Top online cybersecurity courses Cybersecurity is a high-demand, fast-growing area with a high demand for qualified individuals, with high median wages, career opportunities across a wide range of industries, and a tough, fast-paced work environment. Looking at the type of function played inside an organisation is one approach to think about the types of opportunities developing in cybersecurity.
Offensive Cybersecurity
Penetration testing with a focused scope on uncovering security vulnerabilities, faults, hazards, and unreliable environments is referred to as offensive security. When evaluating the health of network, application, and system endpoints, an offensive security practitioner usually takes a systematic approach. The reconnaissance and footprinting phase of offensive cybersecurity usually begins with gathering information on target sites; this information can be cached or gathered using OSINT, Google Dorks, or Shodan. The discovery and mapping out of the network phase involves detecting service over ports, outdated modules, and collecting network IP ranges; probing and scanning using tools and techniques to build intelligence against target sites; and probing and scanning using tools and techniques to build intelligence against target sites. It aids in the development of attack plans and the monitoring of system behaviour against servers or misconfigured defences at this point. In addition, security researchers could employ commercial and open source tools for port probing and network analysis, such as BurpSuite Pro or nmap. Metasploit, which provides known vulnerabilities and exploits against operating systems, servers, and online applications, and KaliLinux, which is regarded the Swiss knife of all hacker tools, are two more well-known programmes. Hands-on assaults are carried out using the gathered data to deliver exploits against target systems and force the system to reveal unexpected information. The findings are usually shared with head departments and their technical engineers in the form of a report in order to better understand the impact and measures to protect against threat agents. Penetration testing is commonly used to meet NIST 800-171 regulatory compliances and other attestations, particularly if the system handles sensitive data such as HIPAA or PCI DSS data. Pentesting demonstrates that the company has assessed its security posture and defences. Understanding typical vulnerabilities as well as network packet flow and protocols is required for penetration testing. To discover vulnerabilities and create proof of concept, it need creative, analytical, and critical thinking capabilities. A good penetration tester will be able to write python scripts or javascripts to deploy custom exploits to web applications or network targets. Because this talent is required for adjusting, adapting, or simply developing your own tools, writing automated scripts is in high demand. Creating customised tools is a crucial aspect of automating today’s information security professional’s everyday routine. Scripting empowers security experts to accomplish more in less time. Skilled tool builders are required by organisations that are serious about security. Writing a backdoor script that uses Exception Handling, Sockets, Process execution, and encryption to establish an initial foothold in a target environment is in high demand. A port scanner to discover an open outbound port, ways to evade antivirus software and network monitoring, and the ability to incorporate payload from tools like Metasploit or scapy for writing network traffic packets will all be included in the backdoor. There are many internet resources to learn from, and being proficient takes discipline and commitment: Pentesting labs is an online course that you may do at your own pace to help you improve your security pentesting abilities. It includes multiple levels of labs and attack domains such as SQL injection (SQLi), XSS, and privilege escalation. Hack The Box is a digital lab that allows you to undertake pentesting by immersing yourself in real-world surroundings. You’re ready for the OSCP certification exam if you’ve completed 48 labs. This is one of the top online resources for passing this credential. Offensive security offers a self-paced online course to help you learn ethical hacking. The training necessitates some basic skills, such as knowledge of the OWASP top ten web vulnerabilities and assaults. Terminal commands for Linux and Windows. Bug bounty programmes are a platform developed for companies that want to assess their security posture. Under a safe harbour arrangement, ethical hackers/pentesters and security researchers have access to the bounty-paying organization’s target sites to undertake advance testing. Following the discovery of flaws, the security researcher or ethical hacker submits a proof of concept report of the discovered vulnerability so that the organisation can reproduce the attack and retest it after applying the patch, and then receives a bounty that can range from $100 to over $20,000 depending on the severity of the vulnerability.
Defensive Cybersecurity
To avoid risk, danger, or cybercrime threats such as espionage, sabotage, or attack, security controls dedicated to withstand or discourage aggression or attack are referred to. It can be a reactive or proactive security technique designed to reduce the risk of data loss. Here’s a nice online course from a company named Defensive Security that offers defensive security online classes. There are numerous stages of defensive security, which means that online training can go in a variety of directions:
Detection and Monitoring
Defensive security detection and monitoring are exactly what they sound like. A systematic technique to identifying and tracking risks such as malware beaconing outward and spear phishing attack mechanisms is referred to as the practise. Through in-depth timeline and super-timeline analysis, this process involves tracking the activities of users and hackers second-by-second on the system you’re analysing, as well as how the attacker obtains legitimate credentials — including domain administrator rights — even in a locked-down environment. Snort, Zeek/Bro, and other open source tools like tcpdump and wireshark are examples of tools and methodologies that incorporate analysis and detection. The data is ingested for enrichment in order to create data dashboards and visualisations for reporting reasons, such as using acquired data to undertake effective remediation across the entire company. To study security detection and monitoring techniques, you can start with a variety of courses and online materials, such as: Cybrary: Cybrary is an online platform that provides a number of free online training courses suitable for entry-level cybersecurity all the way through seasoned professionals with courses, virtual labs, and practise tests all in one spot and taught at just the right time, you can stay focused on your career development. The company also offers mentorship programmes that allow participants to interact with dedicated mentors for career advice and ideas. SANS: SANS offers rigorous, immersion training to help you and your team learn the practical methods required to defend systems and networks against the most serious attacks – those that are actively exploited. The courses are jam-packed with crucial and immediately applicable strategies that you can put to use as soon as you get back to work. They were created through a consensus process including hundreds of administrators, security managers, and information security specialists, and they cover both security foundations and awareness, as well as the technical components of the most critical IT security sectors. Defensive security online training: This is an online platform designed to teach techniques and ways to harden systems, applications, and detection advisories. PurpleLABS, a dedicated virtual infrastructure for detecting and analysing attacker behaviour in terms of approaches, tactics, processes, and offensive tools, is also available. The platform is designed to support continuous improvement of threat hunting (threat hunting) skills as well as learning about current offensive patterns (red teaming) vs direct detection (blue teaming).
Threat Hunting and Incident Response
Security personnel can use incident response training to dig deeper into the meaning of security-related incidents. Any event that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of an organization’s assets is referred to as an incident. Incident response (IR) is a reactive procedure that involves numerous steps. Vulnerability detection is the initial stage in incident response (IR) using tools like Qualys, which is a platform designed to execute a proactive vulnerability assessment for endpoints and web apps. Qualys provides free training and certifications that teach people how to use the tools and functionalities, as well as how to generate reports. Rapid7-Nexpose, which includes a vulnerability assessment tool named Nexpose, is another useful tool. Rapid7 provides on-the-job training. Advanced subjects for extending and evaluating the product’s plethora of data are covered in this two-day interactive class. The next stage is to respond, which entails assessing the vulnerability’s nature and selecting the severity level depending on risk appetite. Mitigation is the next phase, which entails minimising the vulnerability by implementing compensatory measures and lowering the risk to a tolerable level. Responders may take actions to minimise the situation in some cases, but without informing the attacker that the attack has been identified. This allows security personnel to track the attacker’s movements and assess the attack’s extent. The next step is reporting and recovery, which involves submitting the fact-finding and report to management. The next phase is remediation, which is trying to figure out what caused it to happen and then putting in place measures to prevent it from happening again. A root cause analysis is part of this process. Lessons learnt are the final phase, which can be used to improve detection procedures or help prevent a recurrence incident. Individuals interested in learning incident response and handling can obtain GCIH certification from SANS. The course covers cyber threat hunting, which is a proactive approach that entails digging deep into a target environment to uncover hostile actors who have gotten past your first endpoint security measures. An attacker can remain undetected in a network for months while silently collecting data, searching for sensitive information, or obtaining login credentials that will allow them to move laterally across the network. A trigger, an investigation, and a resolution are the three steps in the cyber threat hunting process. Threat hunting training is also available through SANS.
Security Compliance and Risk Assessment
A collection of procedures for identifying, assessing, and implementing risks in your business to ensure that controls are in place is known as security compliance and risk assessment. Many industries that handle sensitive data, such as government, financial services, and healthcare, use risk assessment as a proactive approach to review their defences and security coverage. This assessment informs you of all the dangers that exist in your organisation, as well as the severity of each issue. Knowing where to begin when it comes to improving security allows you to get the most out of your IT budget and resources, saving you both money and time. A Practical Introduction to Cyber Security Risk Management, as well as a list of security compliance and policies, are available from SANS.
Privacy Engineering
If you’ve ever tried to change your privacy settings in a mobile/web app or on a social media site, or if you’ve ever tried to figure out how to use privacy options on a website, you’ve probably come across a privacy interface. Privacy security establishes guidelines for the collection, processing, transfer, deletion, and other uses of personal data in a variety of contexts, including business operations, clinical research, the use and deployment of facial recognition and other sensors, web and mobile device tracking, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, and analytics. The goal of privacy standards is to reflect best practises. These standards will be changed and modified as privacy laws and concepts change over time. These guidelines are intended to become requirements in the future. Some of the standards cover data anonymization, need to know, giving users the right to delete their data, and enabling or disabling cookies. There are online manuals outlining standards and terminologies such as GDPR, CCPA, privacy engineering, and risk management that can help you learn more about privacy.
Cloud Security
Misconfigurations, insufficient security defences, and a lack of securing Key Secrets (KS), as well as applying suitable Identity Access Management (IAM) regulations and trigger points for abnormal behaviour, have made cloud computing an attractive target for hackers. There are a variety of cloud security courses available that cover the basics of securing cloud-based solutions:
Finding the Right Online Cybersecurity Course
This tutorial is only the beginning, and it only touches the surface of what is accessible to cybersecurity experts. But, perhaps, it demonstrates the fact that credible cybersecurity groups offer a variety of genuinely high-quality courses and training online.
