Certified Network Defender (CND)

This class is designed to provide the fundamental skills needed to analyze the internal and external security threats against a network, and to implement security mechanisms to protect an organization’s information. The course helps to evaluate network and Internet security issues and provides security solutions such as designing a security policy, troubleshooting networks, and digital signatures.

Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

1. Understand the fundamental goals, benefits, challenges, and available countermeasures for network defense.

2. Analyze cryptography algorithms and design implementation strategies for privacy and security of information

3. Understand the role of the Intrusion Detection and Prevention System in defending the networks.

4. Understand Linux and Windows security concerns and hardening techniques such as password management, security baseline configurations, etc.

5. Identify risks associated with IoT and mobile devices and select appropriate countermeasures including policies, guidelines, and tools.

6. Implement application whitelisting and blacklisting, sandboxing, patch management, and web application firewall, encryption techniques, and secure design strategies for data loss prevention.

7. Examine the evolution of network security management in virtualized IT environments.

8. Understand cloud computing concepts and different security concerns.

9. Understand wireless networking concepts, network encryption mechanisms, authentication methods, and advantages of network traffic monitoring.

10. Understand logging concepts, centralized log monitoring and perform log analysis to manage secure network operations.

11. Examine various network security incidents and develop policies, processes, and guidelines for incident handling, disaster recovery and business continuity.

12. Develop a risk management program and implement different strategies such as attack surface analysis and cyber threat intelligence to reduce organizational risks.