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Welcome to Cyber Security Foundations: Why Cyber Security is Important

Understand the basics of cybersecurity and learn how to protect yourself, your data, and your company.
Security padlock in network
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Over the next three weeks, you will get to grips with the basics of cybersecurity, learn how to address suspicious internet activity, and how to perform cybersecurity processes as part of your security routine.

Course roadmap

This course contains several practical demonstrations for you to follow along. The best way to learn is by doing, so where we would like you to try out what has been demonstrated or discussed, we will indicate this with ‘over to you’. The weekly topics are shown in the course roadmap below.

Week 1: Physical Security part 1 and part 2, Best Practices: Passwords and Updates Week 2: Social Media, Internet Security, Viruses, Data Backups and Recovery, Week 3: Securing Email Communication, Mobile Devices, The Cloud, and Network Connections

Learning outcomes

This week, we will be focusing on physical security and some best practices. By the end of this week, you will be able to:

  • describe cybersecurity
  • describe the importance of physical security
  • identify the ways your data could be physically attained
  • describe best practices for password management
  • describe best practices for applications, software, and firewalls

Next steps

You will need to ensure that you have all the hardware and software you need in place prior to starting this course. As your first step, ensure that you have the following:

Hardware requirements

  • Processor: Any
  • Memory: Any
  • Storage: At least 10 MG free
  • Access: Administrative access to your device

Software requirements

  • Operating Software (OS): One of the following, Windows 8 (Windows 10 recommended), Linux, OSX
  • Browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Chromium

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Cyber Security Foundations: Why Cyber Security is Important

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