Course title

Cyber security defences

Lecture type

Elective

Course code

23-02-507

Semester

1

ECTS

5

Lecturers and associates

• Zlatan Morić, Senior Lecturer
• Robert Petrunić, Lecturer

Course overview

This module is designed for students to learn the fundamental skills needed to analyse the internal and external security threats against a network, and to implement security mechanisms to protect an organization’s information. During this module students will learn to evaluate network and Internet security issues and provide security solutions such as designing a security policy, troubleshooting networks, and digital signatures.

Students will learn:
Fundamental goals, benefits, challenges, and available countermeasures for network defense.
Analyze cryptography algorithms and design implementation strategies for privacy and security of information.
Role of the Intrusion Detection and Prevention System in defending thenetworks.
Linux and Windows security concerns and hardening techniques such as password management, security baseline configurations, etc.
Identify risks associated with IoT and mobile devices and select appropriate countermeasures including policies, guidelines, and tools.
Implement application whitelisting and blacklisting, sandboxing, patch management, and web application firewall, encryption techniques, and secure design strategies for data loss prevention.
Examine the evolution of network security management in virtualized IT environments.
Cloud computing concepts and different security concerns.
Wireless networking concepts, network encryption mechanisms, authentication methods, and advantages of network traffic monitoring.
Logging concepts, centralized log monitoring and perform log analysis to manage secure network operations.
Development a risk management program and implement different strategies such as attack surface analysis and cyber threat intelligence to reduce organizational risks.

This module is the foundation for the Cyber Security modules.

Literature

Essential reading:
[Anon.] (2020). Certified Network Defender, Albuquerque: Ec-Council
Recommended reading:
Easttom II, W.C., (2013). Network defense and countermeasures: principles and practices. Hoboken: Pearson IT Certification.
Further reading:
Molina-Markham, A., Winder, R.K. and Ridley, A., (2021). Network Defense is Not a Game. arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.10262.