LII:Building a Cybersecurity Toolkit

Title: Building a Cybersecurity Toolkit

Author for citation: David Aucsmith, University of Washington

License for content: Unknown

Publication date: 2023

This is a University of Washington-created course that is released on the edX platform. The self-paced six-week course is designed to help learners to better understand the "type of characteristics and skills needed for cybersecurity jobs and to provide a realistic outlook on what they really need to add to their 'toolkits'—a set of skills that is constantly evolving, not all technical, but fundamentally rooted in problem-solving." The course is free to take, with a Verified Certificate of completion available for $199. The course requires on average two to five hours a week of effort.

The edX course description:

"Technologies are always being defeated.

If you own an information asset that’s valuable enough to the right adversary, it’s only a matter of time before there’s a breach. Today’s technologies attempt to keep adversaries out, but the sad fact is they will inevitably be defeated. This means a successful cybersecurity professional needs to have an expanded arsenal in their toolkit that extends far beyond technical proficiency.

Cybersecurity professionals need to be agile, multifunctional, flexible, and dynamic given how quickly things can change. They need to be able to adapt to change and problem solve quickly, have diverse knowledge to perform many activities, respond to new threats and shift priorities to meet the challenge of the day."

"By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Identify what tools and skills are necessary to form today’s Professional Cybersecurity toolkit;
• Match appropriate tools to different purposes in the cybersecurity management process;
• Synthesize insights gained in course exploration of toolkit skill sets, working toward self-evaluation of talents and interests aligned to cybersecurity’s array of roles"

About the authors

The edX instructor is David Aucsmith of the University of Washington. He "is a Senior Principal Research Scientist - Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington. He has worked in a variety of security technology areas including secure computer systems, secure communications systems, security architecture, random number generation, cryptography and cryptographic systems, steganography and network intrusion detection."

General layout and contents of the course

A pre-enrollment syllabus is not available, and the general course layout is not clear without enrolling.

The course

: The course can be found on the edX site, under the Computer Science category. This course started in the autumn of 2023, and the free audit track expires on December 4.