Subject Overview

An essential, practice-oriented study of protecting computer networks and Internet-connected systems. The subject covers network foundations, threats, secure architectures, cryptography, identity, defensive technologies, protocol security, monitoring, incident response, cloud and emerging environments, governance, ethics, and current industry practices.

Learning Goal

Students will be able to explain network security principles, recognize and assess common threats, configure basic safeguards, interpret security data, respond to incidents, and make ethical, risk-based security decisions for modern networked environments.

Syllabus

1. Network and Internet Foundations

Learning Objective: Explain network types, topologies, devices, addressing, ports, packet flow, routing, DNS, and the OSI and TCP/IP models using essential security terminology.

Category: foundation

2. Network Security Principles and Risk

Learning Objective: Apply confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, accountability, least privilege, defense in depth, zero trust, attack-surface analysis, and basic risk assessment.

Category: foundation

3. Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Attack Methods

Learning Objective: Identify malware, phishing, spoofing, sniffing, scanning, password attacks, denial-of-service, man-in-the-middle, session hijacking, insider threats, social engineering, and advanced persistent threats.

Category: core

4. Secure Network Architecture and Segmentation

Learning Objective: Design basic secure architectures using zones, subnets, VLANs, DMZs, microsegmentation, network access control, secure baselines, redundancy, and trust boundaries.

Category: core

5. Cryptography, Certificates, and Secure Communications

Learning Objective: Distinguish encryption, hashing, digital signatures, symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, PKI, certificates, key management, TLS, IPsec, SSH, and VPN applications.

Category: core

6. Identity and Access Security

Learning Objective: Implement foundational identity controls, including secure passwords, multifactor authentication, role-based access, privileged access, directory services, federation, single sign-on, and authentication protocols.

Category: core

7. Firewalls, Proxies, and Network Defense Technologies

Learning Objective: Explain and configure basic firewall rules, packet and stateful filtering, application gateways, proxies, secure web gateways, intrusion detection and prevention, and endpoint-network integration.

Category: application

8. Securing Internet Services and Protocols

Learning Objective: Assess security weaknesses and protections for TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, ARP, HTTP/HTTPS, email, file transfer, remote administration, APIs, and common Internet-facing services.

Category: core

9. Wireless, Mobile, IoT, and Operational Technology Security

Learning Objective: Secure Wi-Fi, mobile access, Bluetooth, IoT, and basic operational technology environments through strong authentication, encryption, segmentation, device management, and safe configuration.

Category: application

10. Cloud, Virtualized, and Hybrid Network Security

Learning Objective: Explain shared responsibility, virtual networks, cloud firewalls, security groups, secure connectivity, containers, software-defined networking, SASE, and controls for cloud and hybrid digital transformation.

Category: contemporary

11. Security Monitoring, Logging, and Analytics

Learning Objective: Collect and interpret logs, flows, alerts, and indicators of compromise; use SIEM, packet analysis, baselining, threat intelligence, and basic security metrics to support decisions.

Category: application

12. Vulnerability Assessment and Security Testing

Learning Objective: Conduct authorized discovery, scanning, configuration review, patch prioritization, and introductory penetration-testing activities while documenting findings and remediation responsibly.

Category: application

13. Network Incident Response and Resilience

Learning Objective: Follow preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery, evidence preservation, communication, backup, disaster recovery, and lessons-learned processes for network incidents.

Category: application

14. Governance, Ethics, AI, and Future Network Security

Learning Objective: Relate policies, standards, legal duties, privacy, ethical conduct, NIST and ISO frameworks, vendor and supply-chain risk, managerial reporting, responsible AI-assisted defense, AI-enabled attacks, automation, post-quantum readiness, and emerging security trends.

Category: strategic