Cybersecurity
Learn to defend real systems. Threats, controls, detection and response — with a lab where you break things you're allowed to break, and then fix them. The foundation course of a security track, reachable from IT support, networking, QA and administration backgrounds, not only from development.
"Cybersecurity" names an entire field — and a course that promised to cover all of it would be either impossibly shallow or obviously padded. This is scoped deliberately as the foundation course of a security track: it covers the breadth a practitioner needs before specialising — threats, cryptography, identity, network and endpoint security, security operations, governance and risk — and it goes deep enough on defensive operations to make you employable in an entry security role, because that is the realistic first job. It is built around producing the artefacts employers actually screen on: a documented home lab, a written vulnerability report, an investigation write-up.
It has a wider entry point than the other courses in this section. Security is one of the few technical fields with a genuine, sustained shortage of qualified people, and entry-level defensive roles remain among the most accessible ways in for candidates without prior security experience. If you are a fresh IT graduate, this is a route into a field that is hiring. If you are a working professional — and especially if you are in IT support, helpdesk, desktop or networking, the single most common and most successful transition path into security — this course meets you where you are: general IT literacy and command-line comfort are enough to start.
Ethical & Legal Use — Read This First
- All offensive and exploitation techniques on this course are taught for defensive purposes only, exclusively in isolated lab environments and against deliberately vulnerable practice targets provided for the course.
- You must never test systems you do not own or lack written authorisation to test. Unauthorised access to computer systems is a criminal offence, and this course will never ask you to attempt one.
- The course teaches responsible disclosure and the legal and regulatory context of security work, so you understand not just how attacks happen but the rules that govern defending against them.
What This Course Does — and Does Not — Cover
Naming the boundary is a trust signal, and it lets you see this as the first step of a route rather than a one-off. This foundation course deliberately does not cover, and points forward to, these specialisations:
- Advanced offensive security and penetration testing — this course teaches attacker techniques only to the depth a defender needs
- Cloud-provider-specific security (AWS / Azure / GCP security engineering in depth) — covered here only at the conceptual, shared- responsibility level
- Application security and DevSecOps — pipeline, container and supply-chain security live in our Docker & Kubernetes, Terraform and CI/CD courses; this course does not re-teach them
- Dedicated compliance and GRC work — introduced here, but auditing and framework specialisation is its own path
Where This Leads
- Defensive operations — deepen SOC analysis, detection engineering and threat hunting (the natural next step from this course).
- Offensive security — penetration testing and red teaming, with authorised scope.
- Cloud security — securing provider environments in depth, building on our cloud and DevOps courses.
- Application security and governance, risk & compliance — two distinct professional tracks this course opens the door to.
Security in the Age of AI — Both Sides
Security is one of the few fields where AI cuts both ways, and this course teaches both. Attackers use it to scale phishing, generate malware variants and accelerate reconnaissance; defenders use it for detection, triage and log analysis. And organisations are deploying AI systems that create genuinely new attack surface — prompt injection, model and data poisoning, insecure agent tool access, and sensitive data leaking through model interactions. This course gives securing AI systems and defending against AI-accelerated attacks a dedicated treatment — barely covered in existing entry courses, and exactly where the field is moving. It connects naturally to our Generative AI and AI Agent courses, and vendor-neutral AI-security credentials have begun to appear alongside the traditional foundations.
Course at a Glance
- Duration: 10 weeks | ~75 hours | live + hands-on
- Format: Live online · lab-heavy · isolated practice environments and a portfolio of documented investigations
- Prerequisite: General IT literacy and comfort with the command line. Networking basics helpful and reinforced early. No security or programming background required.
- Curriculum: 10 modules, from security foundations to governance, compliance and a capstone engagement
- Certification: Aligned to the leading vendor-neutral entry-level security certification (CompTIA Security+), with onward specialisation paths mapped
- Curriculum reviewed: July 2026 — the threat landscape and certification objectives move fast; this syllabus is checked against official sources
Course Highlights
- Every module leads with what you do, detect, defend or respond to — not what you "learn about"
- A home lab you build in week one and use all the way to the capstone
- Defensive operations to employable depth — SIEM, detection engineering, a realistic Tier 1 analyst queue
- A full incident-response exercise with timeline reconstruction and a post-incident report
- Offensive technique taught for defence only, in isolated labs against deliberately vulnerable targets
- Securing AI systems and defending against AI-accelerated attacks — a dedicated module
- A portfolio of the artefacts employers screen on: lab, vulnerability report, investigation write-up
- Zero trust taught as an architectural principle, not a product to buy
Hands-on Projects & Portfolio
Isolated network, vulnerable targets, monitoring stack — the foundation for everything else.
Capture and analyse a session to identify suspicious activity.
A lab environment assessed, with a professional written report and prioritised remediation.
Against deliberately vulnerable applications, with fixes proposed.
Work a realistic alert queue — triage, escalate and document.
Write and tune rules that catch a simulated attack without drowning in false positives.
Full timeline reconstruction and a post-incident report.
Dissect a real-world-style campaign, including AI-generated lures.
Demonstrate prompt injection and data exposure against a test application, then implement guardrails.
End-to-end assessment, detection, response and stakeholder presentation.
Tools & Stack
Kali Linux Wireshark Nmap Burp Suite Metasploit (lab only) OWASP ZAP Splunk Elastic Security Wazuh Suricata Nessus or OpenVAS Sysmon Velociraptor Autopsy MITRE ATT&CK CIS Benchmarks NIST frameworks Active Directory pfSense Docker Python & Bash TryHackMe-style labs
Certification Alignment
- Mapped to CompTIA Security+, the leading vendor-neutral entry-level security certification — whose objectives have been refreshed to include zero-trust architecture, cloud/hybrid security and current threat trends
- Onward defensive analyst, penetration testing and cloud security specialisations mapped as your next step
- Newer vendor-neutral AI-security credentials have started to appear alongside the traditional foundations — this course builds the base for them
- Presented as preparation and alignment — no official partnership or accreditation implied, and no exam outcome guaranteed
Career Outcomes
Security operations is one of the few technical fields with a genuine, sustained shortage of qualified people, and entry-level defensive roles remain among the most accessible ways into the field for candidates without prior security experience. Employers increasingly screen on demonstrable hands-on ability — a documented home lab, a written vulnerability report, an investigation write-up — rather than coursework alone, which is exactly why this course is built around producing those artefacts. It targets:
- SOC Analyst (Tier 1)
- Security Analyst
- Information Security Analyst
- Incident Response Analyst
- Vulnerability Analyst
- Security Engineer (with experience)
- GRC / Compliance Analyst
- IT professional with security ownership
Who This Course Is For
- Final-year students and fresh IT graduates targeting security roles
- IT support, helpdesk, desktop and network professionals moving into security — the single most common and most successful transition path
- System and network administrators taking on security responsibility
- Developers, QA and DevOps engineers who need real security depth rather than a checklist
- Professionals from non-technical backgrounds making a considered career change
- Anyone preparing for a foundational security certification
Material Includes
- Class recordings
- Home-lab build guides & deliberately vulnerable practice targets
- Report templates, playbooks & detection rule sets
- Certificate
Prerequisites
- General IT literacy
- Comfort with the command line
- Networking basics helpful, reinforced early; no security or programming background required
Estimated Time: 7 Hours
You build:- A risk assessment of a sample organisation — assets, threats, attack surface and treatment decisions — traced back to the CIA triad, the way a real security programme is justified
- The CIA triad and why every control traces back to it; threat actors and their motivations; attack surface and the kill chain
- Risk assessment and treatment; defence in depth; zero trust as an architectural principle rather than a product
- Thinking like an attacker in order to defend
Estimated Time: 8 Hours
You detect:- Suspicious activity in a captured traffic sample — reading packets to find what shouldn't be there — on the segmented, monitored home lab you begin building here
- The protocols that matter for security; packet analysis; firewalls and segmentation; VPNs and secure remote access; wireless security
- Network monitoring and intrusion detection; DNS and email as attack vectors
- Reading traffic to find what shouldn't be there
Estimated Time: 7 Hours
You defend:- A service against the cryptographic failures that actually cause breaches — misconfigured TLS, weak algorithms, an expired certificate, poor key handling — found and fixed
- Symmetric and asymmetric encryption; hashing and integrity; digital signatures; certificates and public key infrastructure
- TLS in the real world; key management; encryption at rest and in transit
- The practical failure modes — misconfiguration, weak algorithms, expired certificates and poor key handling
Estimated Time: 7 Hours
You defend:- An identity control plane — multi-factor, least privilege, privileged access management and a clean account lifecycle — configured against a directory, because identity is where modern attacks land
- Authentication factors and multi-factor implementation; passwords, passkeys and modern credentials; single sign-on and federation
- Privileged access management; least privilege and separation of duties; directory services; account lifecycle
- Why identity is the primary control plane in modern environments
Estimated Time: 8 Hours
You defend:- Hardened Windows and Linux endpoints with EDR, patch discipline and application allow-listing — and a tested backup-and-recovery treated as the security control it is
- Operating system hardening for Windows and Linux; patch and vulnerability management; endpoint detection and response
- Malware types and behaviour analysis; application allow-listing; backup and recovery as a security control
- Data classification; loss prevention; mobile and remote device security
Estimated Time: 8 Hours
Ethical use: every technique in this module is performed only in isolated lab environments, against deliberately vulnerable targets provided for the course. You will never be asked to test a system you do not own or lack written authorisation to test.
You do:- A full vulnerability assessment of a lab target — reconnaissance to reporting — producing a professional write-up with prioritised remediation, the artefact that gets you hired
- Reconnaissance, scanning and enumeration; common exploitation classes; the web application vulnerabilities that dominate real incidents
- Social engineering and phishing; password attacks; privilege escalation; lateral movement
- Vulnerability assessment and reporting — all in isolated labs against deliberately vulnerable targets
Estimated Time: 8 Hours
You detect:- A simulated attack, worked from a realistic Tier 1 analyst queue — triaged, escalated and documented — with tuned detections that catch it without drowning you in false positives
- Logging and what to collect; SIEM fundamentals; writing detections and tuning out noise; alert triage
- Threat hunting; threat intelligence and mapping activity to a recognised adversary technique framework; digital forensics basics
- Working a realistic Tier 1 analyst queue
Estimated Time: 7 Hours
You respond to:- A simulated breach, worked end to end — detection, containment, eradication and recovery — with a reconstructed timeline, sound evidence handling, and a post-incident report
- The response lifecycle; preparation and playbooks; detection and analysis; containment, eradication and recovery
- Evidence handling and chain of custody; communication during an incident; post-incident review
- Business continuity and disaster recovery
Estimated Time: 8 Hours
You defend:- A test AI application against prompt injection and data exposure — demonstrated, then closed with guardrails — plus a cloud environment reviewed for the identity and misconfiguration risks that dominate real cloud incidents
- Securing cloud environments including the shared responsibility model; identity and misconfiguration as the dominant cloud risks; container and supply-chain risk at a conceptual level
- Securing AI systems — prompt injection, data and model poisoning, agent tool permissions, sensitive data exposure through model interactions
- Defending against AI-accelerated attacks including sophisticated phishing and deepfake-assisted social engineering
Estimated Time: 7 Hours
You run:- One end-to-end engagement — assess an environment, find and document weaknesses, detect a simulated attack, respond to it, and present findings to a non-technical stakeholder
- Security policies and standards; recognised control and risk frameworks; audits and evidence
- Privacy and data protection obligations including the regimes that apply to organisations operating in and serving India; vendor and third-party risk; security awareness programmes
- The legal context and responsible disclosure; capstone engagement and stakeholder presentation
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