Let's review the important topics we've looked at in the Security
Operations for the Certified in Cybersecurity course.
We broke this course into four major sections, data security, security
operations and administration, security awareness training, and we finished off
with a review of some of the exam tips and techniques.
When we looked at data security, we saw that it was important that
we protect our data through things like ownership, classification,
labels, and having a retention policy, which ended with, of
course, secure destruction.
When we looked at cryptography, we said it was
important to understand the terminology,
plaintext and clear text, to encrypt the actual crypto system and
the algorithm or mathematical formula that it used, and the key,
also known as the crypto variable.
We looked at the output of the crypto system being
cipher text or the cryptogram.
We can transmit or store our data in an insecure area, but when
it's received, it needs to be then decrypted so that the receiver
will have the actual message itself.
We said there were two types of algorithms, symmetric that used the same
key in both the encryption and decryption process.
It was really good for confidentiality,
relatively fast, and good for encrypting streaming content.
But we also looked at asymmetric algorithms, which
are based on the use of a key pair,
a private key, and, from that, a public key that was
computed and could be shared with anybody.
We said that the public key was the result of a one‑way function.
It's something that was computed from the private
key, but could not be reversed.
We also looked at message authentication codes that were used to
verify integrity. And when we look at things like hashing, for
example, we are looking at integrity of the message that we can
store it or transmit it.
We looked at security monitoring so we're aware of changes in
our risk level, which could be affected by things like
changes in the value of the asset.
Things that used to be important might not be as important anymore.
And other newly emerging things could be the things
that really need to be protected.
There are changes in threats and newly discovered vulnerabilities, as well as
sometimes a focus of attacks by hacking and advanced persistent threat groups on
certain industry sectors or types of systems. In security operations and
administration, we looked how important it was to maintain proper change control
and configuration management and have policies that guided how people could do
their jobs on a daily basis.
We looked at security awareness training, it's often called the best security
control we have, and how we address things in our training such as social
engineering and password protection, practical useful knowledge that all the
people in our organization should have.
Then we looked at the exam. We reviewed some tips and techniques to help
you pass, and that was looking at the exam outline,
doing sample questions, and having a study plan.
Congratulations. You now have completed all of the courses in
this certification journey. But it's good to review and
understand all the topics we've covered.
Don't just memorize, but understand why is this important, what are they
trying to get across, what's the intent here, not just memorization of
definitions. Do the sample questions you have in the study guide. And now
that you've completed the last course, go back and review. But be confident,
share your experiences, and be a force for change in your world.