Security Leadership: May 2021 - Live Online

Overview

Every good security practitioner and every good security program begins with the same mantra: learn the fundamentals. SEC301 starts by instilling familiarity with core security terms and principles. By the time you leave the classroom after the first day, you fully understand the Principle of Least Privilege and why it drives all security decisions. You know the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) method of prioritizing your security program. You understand the fundamentals of risk management, security policy, and authentication/authorization/accountability (AAA).

Overview

If you are going to secure a computer or a network, you must have at least a basic knowledge of how they work. Every attack uses something that exists for perfectly valid reasons and misuses it in invalid malicious ways. To work in cyber security, you have to understand the valid functions to understand the potential for invalid misuse.

The day begins with a discussion of how computers work. We cover the numbering system of decimal, binary, and hexadecimal - vital to understanding computers and networks. We also cover ASCII (the American Standard Code for Information Interchange). We also discuss what an operating system is. We talk about the terms kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and terabyte and what those terms mean. We cover the difference between the hard drive and Random Access Memory (RAM). In short, how a computer works.

From there, we move to a discussion of how information moves from point A to point B across a network without using any technical terminology of any kind. This discussion includes both Internet and Local Area Network (LAN) examples. As we move on through the day, we slowly add the technical aspects of those explanations, including the terms and acronyms of networking. We discuss the origins of the Internet and why that origin matters to modern-day cyber security. We explain what a protocol is, and what both the OSI and TCP/IP stacks are and why they matter. You learn about standard network hardware such as a network interface card, a switch, and a router. We progress to topics such as IP addresses, network masks, default gateways, and routing. We explain, compare, and contrast the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and why you might want to use one over the other. Eventually, we get to network protocols such as the Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP), Domain Name System (DNS), and Network Address Translation (NAT).

While the above description sounds exceptionally technical, rest assured that we present the material in the most non-technical way possible. We cover each topic at a very high-level without getting into the nitty-gritty details.

Overview

Cryptography is one of the most complex issues faced by security practitioners. It is not a topic you can explain in passing; we spend a full day on it. You do not need a calculator for this day since we do not delve into the math behind crypto. We introduce you to cryptographic terms. We explain what steganography is. We then look at historical examples of cryptography. We do this because even the most advanced cryptographic systems today utilize methods of encrypting data that were used hundreds of years B.C. So we explain the historical examples that are very easy to understand to make it easier to understand modern cryptographic methods and principles.

We cover the "work factor" - the length of time necessary to break cryptography and why understanding this concept is so important. We cover some of the potential attacks against crypto and which ones are viable against modern cryptography and which attacks are nonviable. We cover hashing, symmetric & asymmetric cryptography and how each works. We then show real-world examples of how those cryptographic systems work. We cover the secure key exchange mechanism called Diffie-Hellman. We even briefly cover digital certificates and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Once we have thoroughly explained how cryptography works, we end the day with a discussion of data encrypting protocols. Things that use cryptography to secure data on our networks and across the Internet. Here we cover email encryption, secure remote administration, secure file transfer, and three examples of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

Again, we do not spend our time on the mathematics behind cryptography, but instead, we are highly process focused. We explain the steps required to make crypto work, the order those steps must occur in, and which key you must use for each step.

Overview

Our fourth day in the classroom begins our exploration of cyber security technologies. We begin with wireless network security (WiFi and Bluetooth), and mobile device security (i.e., mobile phones & tablets). We compare and contrast the security models of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android phones. We also discuss the almost total lack of security in the Internet of Things (IoT). We follow that with a look at some frequent attacks, including open-source intelligence gathering, social engineering, drive-by download attacks, watering hole attacks, buffer overflow attacks, Denial of Service (DoS), and other frequent attacks. We then move into a discussion of malware. What is a virus versus a worm or a trojan horse? What is ransomware, and what is cryptojacking. We then cover both anti-malware and host firewalls that try to counter these problems.

Overview

The final day of our SEC301 journey continues the discussion of Cyber Security Technologies. The day begins by looking at several security technologies, including compartmentalization, firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS), sniffers, content filters, sinkholes, ethical hacking, active defense, threat hunting and many more. We then take a solid look at Browser and Web security, and the difficulties of securing the web environment. For example, students understand why and how their browser connects to anywhere from 5 to 100+ different Internet locations each time they load a single web page. We end the day with a look at system security to include hardening operating systems, patching, virtual machines, cloud computing, and backup. We include solid real-world examples of how to implement these.