🚀 Cybersecurity for Beginners – a curriculum

In this rapidly changing age of AI technology adoption, it is even more critical to understand how to secure IT systems. This course is designed to teach you fundamental cyber security concepts to kick-start your security learning. It is vendor agnostic and is divided into small lessons that should take around 30-60 mins to complete. Each lesson has a small quiz and links to further reading if you want to dive into the topic a bit more.

What this course covers 📚

• 🔐 Basic cyber security concepts such as the CIA triad, the differences between risks, threats, etc,
• 🛡️ Understanding what a security control is and what forms they take.
• 🌐 Understanding what zero trust is and why this is important in modern cyber security.
• 🔑 Understanding key concepts and themes across identity, networking, security operations, infrastructure and data security.
• 🔧 Giving some examples of tools used to implement security controls.

What this course does not cover 🙅‍♂️

• 🚫 How to use specific security tools.
• 🚫 How to "hack" or do red teaming/offensive security.
• 🚫 Learning about specific compliance standards.

When you have finished this course, you can move onto some of our Microsoft Learn modules. We recommend you continue your learning with Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals.

Ultimately, you could consider taking the Exam SC-900: Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals exam.

💁 If you have any feedback or suggestions on this course and any content we're missing, we'd love to hear from you!

Modules Overview 📝

Module number	Module name	Concepts taught	Learning objectives
1.1	Basic security concepts	The CIA triad	Learn about confidentiality, availability and integrity. Also authenticity and also nonrepudiation and privacy.
1.2	Basic security concepts	Common cyber security threats	Learn about the common cyber security threats facing individuals and organizations.
1.3	Basic security concepts	Understanding risk management	Learn about assessing and understanding risk – impact/likelihood and implementing controls.
1.4	Basic security concepts	Security practices and documentation	Learn about the difference between policies, procedures, standards and regulations/laws.
1.5	Basic security concepts	Zero trust	Learn about what is zero trust and how does it affect architecture? What is defense in depth?
1.6	Basic security concepts	The shared responsibility model	What is the shared responsibility model and how does it affect cyber security?
1.7	End of module quiz
2.1	Identity & access management fundamentals	IAM key concepts	Learn about the principle of least privilege, segregation of duties, how IAM supports zero trust.
2.2	Identity & access management fundamentals	IAM zero trust architecture	Learn about how identity is the new perimeter for modern IT environments and the threats it mitigates.
2.3	Identity & access management fundamentals	IAM capabilities	Learn about IAM capabilities and controls to secure identities
2.4	End of module quiz
3.1	Network security fundamentals	Networking key concepts	Learn about networking concepts (IP addressing, port numbers, encryption, etc.)
3.2	Network security fundamentals	Networking zero trust architecture	Learn about how networking contributes to an E2E ZT architecture and the threats it mitigates.
3.3	Network security fundamentals	Network security capabilities	Learn about network security tooling – firewalls, WAF, DDoS protection, etc.
3.4	End of module quiz
4.1	Security operations fundamentals	SecOps key concepts	Learn about why security operations are important and how it differs from normal IT ops teams.
4.2	Security operations fundamentals	SecOps zero trust architecture	Learn about how SecOps contributes to an E2E ZT architecture and the threats it mitigates.
4.3	Security operations fundamentals	SecOps capabilities	Learn about SecOps tooling – SIEM, XDR, etc.
4.4	End of module quiz
5.1	Application security fundamentals	AppSec key concepts	Learn about AppSec concepts such as secure by design, input validation, etc.
5.2	Application security fundamentals	AppSec capabilities	Learn about AppSec tooling: pipeline security tools, code scanning, secret scanning, etc.
5.3	End of module quiz
6.1	Infrastructure security fundamentals	Infrastructure security key concepts	Learn about hardening systems, patching, security hygiene, container security.
6.2	Infrastructure security fundamentals	Infrastructure security capabilities	Learn about tooling that can assist with infrastructure security e.g. CSPM, container security, etc.
6.3	End of module quiz
7.1	Data security fundamentals	Data security key concepts	Learn about data classification and retention and why this is important to an organization.
7.2	Data security fundamentals	Data security capabilities	Learn about data security tooling – DLP, inside risk management, data governance, etc.
7.3	End of module quiz
8.1	AI security fundamentals	AI security key concepts	Learn about the differences and similarities between traditional security and AI security.
8.2	AI security fundamentals	AI security capabilities	Learn about AI security tooling and the controls that can be used to secure AI.
8.3	AI security fundamentals	Responsible AI	Learn about what responsible AI is and AI specific harms that security professionals need to be aware of.
8.4	End of module quiz

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