Cybersecurity has become a top priority for enterprises adapting to the post-COVID world, where remote work has shifted the security perimeter to workers’ identities and devices. In this new landscape, cybersecurity is as critical as internet access itself.
This course is designed for the world’s largest work-from-home experiment. Studies and news reports have shown that cyber attackers quickly exploit the new, unprotected threat surfaces created by remote work. This program equips Network Defense Teams with advanced skills and strategies to defend against network breaches in a post-pandemic world. It is essential for individuals and corporations seeking to enhance their network defense capabilities.
Network Defender (SF) (Certified Network Defender (CND)) is the most advanced network defense course available, covering 20 critical network security domains. Participants will learn to protect, detect, and respond to network attacks.
Course Details:
This 5-day instructor-led course focuses on training Network Administrators to protect, detect, and respond to network threats. Learners will gain a fundamental understanding of data transfer, network and software technologies, and how networks operate. The course covers network defense fundamentals, security controls, protocols, perimeter appliances, IDS, VPN and firewall configuration, network traffic analysis, and vulnerability scanning.
Course Outline
Lesson 1: Network Attacks and Defense Strategies
- Explain essential terminologies related to network security attacks
- Describe various network-level attack techniques
- Describe various application-level attack techniques
- Describe various social engineering attack techniques
- Describe various email attack techniques
- Describe various mobile device-specific attack techniques
- Describe various cloud-specific attack techniques
- Describe various wireless network-specific attack techniques
- Describe attackers’ hacking methodologies and frameworks
- Understand the fundamental goals, benefits, and challenges of network defense
- Explain the continual/adaptive security strategy
- Explain the defense-in-depth security strategy
Lesson 2: Administrative Network Security
- Learn to obtain compliance with regulatory frameworks and standards
- Discuss various regulatory frameworks, laws, and acts
- Learn to design and develop security policies
- Learn to conduct different types of security and awareness training
- Learn to implement other administrative security measures
Lesson 3: Technical Network Security
- Discuss access control principles, terminologies, and models
- Redefine access control in today’s distributed and mobile computing world
- Discuss Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Discuss cryptographic security techniques
- Discuss various cryptographic algorithms
- Discuss the security benefits of network segmentation techniques
- Discuss various essential network security solutions
- Discuss various essential network security protocols
Lesson 4: Network Perimeter Security
- Understand firewall security concerns, capabilities, and limitations
- Understand different types of firewall technologies and their usage
- Understand firewall topologies and their usage
- Distinguish between hardware, software, host, network, internal, and external firewalls
- Select firewalls based on their deep traffic inspection capabilities
- Discuss the firewall implementation and deployment process
- Discuss recommendations and best practices for secure firewall implementation and deployment
- Discuss firewall administration concepts
- Understand the role, capabilities, limitations, and concerns in IDS deployment
- Discuss IDS classification
- Discuss various components of IDS
- Discuss the effective deployment of network and host-based IDS
- Learn how to deal with false positive and false negative IDS/IPS alerts
- Discuss considerations for selecting appropriate IDS/IPS solutions
- Discuss various NIDS and HIDS solutions with their intrusion detection capabilities
- Discuss Snort
- Discuss router and switch security measures, recommendations, and best practices
- Leverage Zero Trust Model security using Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP)
Lesson 5: Endpoint Security – Windows Systems
- Understand Windows OS and security concerns
- Discuss Windows security components
- Discuss various Windows security features
- Discuss Windows security baseline configurations
- Discuss Windows user account and password management
- Discuss Windows patch management
- Discuss user access management
- Explore Windows OS security hardening techniques
- Discuss Windows Active Directory security best practices
- Discuss Windows network services and protocol security
Lesson 6: Endpoint Security – Linux Systems
- Understand Linux OS and security concerns
- Discuss Linux installation and patching
- Discuss Linux OS hardening techniques
- Discuss Linux user access and password management
- Discuss Linux network security and remote access
- Discuss various Linux security tools and frameworks
Lesson 7: Endpoint Security – Mobile Devices
- Understand common mobile usage policies in enterprises
- Discuss security risks and guidelines associated with enterprise mobile usage policies
- Discuss and implement various enterprise-level mobile security management solutions
- Discuss and implement general security guidelines and best practices for mobile platforms
- Discuss security guidelines and tools for Android devices
- Discuss security guidelines and tools for iOS devices
Lesson 8: Endpoint Security – IoT Devices
- Understand IoT devices, their needs, and application areas
- Understand the IoT ecosystem and communication models
- Understand security challenges and risks associated with IoT-enabled environments
- Discuss security in IoT-enabled environments
- Discuss security measures for IoT-enabled IT environments
- Discuss IoT security tools and best practices
- Discuss and refer to various standards, initiatives, and efforts for IoT security
Lesson 9: Administrative Application Security
- Discuss and implement application whitelisting and blacklisting
- Discuss and implement application sandboxing
- Discuss and implement application patch management
- Discuss and implement Web Application Firewalls (WAF)
Lesson 10: Data Security
- Understand data security and its importance
- Discuss the implementation of data access controls
- Discuss the implementation of encryption for data at rest
- Discuss the implementation of encryption for data in transit
- Discuss data masking concepts
- Discuss data backup and retention
- Discuss data destruction concepts
- Discuss data loss prevention concepts
Lesson 11: Enterprise Virtual Network Security
- Discuss the evolution of network and security management concepts in modern virtualized IT environments
- Understand essential concepts of virtualization
- Discuss Network Virtualization (NV) security
- Discuss SDN security
- Discuss Network Function Virtualization (NFV) security
- Discuss OS virtualization security
- Discuss security guidelines, recommendations, and best practices for containers
- Discuss security guidelines, recommendations, and best practices for Docker
- Discuss security guidelines, recommendations, and best practices for Kubernetes
Lesson 12: Enterprise Cloud Security
- Understand Cloud Computing Fundamentals
- Understanding the Insights of Cloud Security
- Evaluate CSP for Security before Consuming Cloud Service
- Discuss security in Amazon Cloud (AWS)
- Discuss security in Microsoft Azure Cloud
- Discuss security in Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Discuss general security best practices and tools for cloud security
Lesson 13: Wireless Network Security
- Understand wireless network fundamentals
- Understand wireless network encryption mechanisms
- Understand wireless network authentication methods
- Discuss and implement wireless network security measures
Lesson 14: Network Traffic Monitoring and Analysis
- Understand the need and advantages of network traffic monitoring
- Setting up the environment for network monitoring
- Determine baseline traffic signatures for normal and suspicious network traffic
- Perform network monitoring and analysis for suspicious traffic using Wireshark
- Discuss network performance and bandwidth monitoring tools and techniques
Lesson 15: Network Logs Monitoring and Analysis
- Understand logging concepts
- Discuss log monitoring and analysis on Windows systems
- Discuss log monitoring and analysis on Linux
- Discuss log monitoring and analysis on Mac
- Discuss log monitoring and analysis in Firewall
- Discuss log monitoring and analysis on Routers
- Discuss log monitoring and analysis on Web Servers
- Discuss centralized log monitoring and analysis
Lesson 16: Incident Response and Forensic Investigation
- Understand incident response concept
- Understand the role of first responder in incident response
- Discuss Do’s and Don’t in first response
- Describe incident handling and response process
- Describe forensics investigation process
Lesson 17: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
- Introduction to Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) concepts
- Discuss BC/DR Activities
- Explain Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
- Discuss BC/DR Standards
Lesson 18: Risk Anticipation with Risk Management
- Understand risk management concepts
- Learn to manage risk through a risk management program
- Learn about different Risk Management Frameworks (RMF)
- Learn to manage vulnerabilities through a vulnerability management program
- Learn about vulnerability assessment and scanning
Lesson 19: Threat Assessment with Attack Surface Analysis
- Understand attack surface concepts
- Learn to understand and visualize your attack surface
- Learn to identify Indicators of Exposure (IoE)
- Learn to perform attack simulations
- Learn to reduce the attack surface
- Discuss attack surface analysis specific to cloud and IoT
Lesson 20: Threat Prediction with Cyber Threat Intelligence
- Understand the role of cyber threat intelligence in network defense
- Understand the types of threat intelligence
- Understand the Indicators of Threat Intelligence: Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and Indicators of Attack (IoA)
- Understand the layers of threat intelligence
- Learn to leverage and consume threat intelligence for proactive defense
