Cover Your Computer Security Basics with this edX Course

Cybersecurity Basics course by edX will provide you with the knowledge and background to understand the basics of cybersecurity. It covers the history and motives behind cyberattacks. It will also assist you in understanding current cyber threats to individuals and organizations. As an introduction to cybersecurity, you will learn its key terminology, security basics, concepts of cybersecurity, and tools.

Critical thinking is important for anyone who wants to make a career in cybersecurity. This program will teach you about the CIA triad and what confidentiality, integrity, and availability mean. The course emphasizes social engineering and how it is employed in phishing and vishing attacks.

Finally, you will learn more about organizations and resources that can be used to research on cybersecurity issues in today's modern era. The instructor for this course was Jeff Crume, who is a Security Architect and Distinguished Engineer with IBM. His concept delivery was wonderful.

It is a self-paced, well-curated beginner-level online course taught by an experienced faculty. The course is spread over 4 weeks and requires learners to put in 8 hours per week.

The course is very helpful as it helps learners understand the basics of cybersecurity and how systems work. We were also provided with relevant study materials. This course provided me with the background needed to understand basic cybersecurity essentials. I was able to learn the history of cybersecurity, the types and motives of cyberattacks, and thereby enhance my knowledge of cybersecurity threats that organizations and individuals are currently facing.

Technically, the course is divided into 4 modules:

In the first module, we talked about the history of cybersecurity and pondered over some case studies.

The second module is all about the various types of actors that play their roles in the cybersecurity world and how their motives vary from each other. In this, we learn about malware, cyber hacking, various other attacks, and their prevention.

In the third module, we discussed key cyber security concepts like CIA Triad, Access Management, Incident response, etc.

The fourth module deals with key security tools like cyber-attack prevention measures. We studied firewalls, antiviruses, cryptography, penetration testing, and other security tools.

The instructor has a very efficient and calm way of explaining lessons. The faculty in general, try to cover each topic and explain every detail while keeping the students' interest intact. Perhaps, this is one of the most important aspects of the course, the fact that the learner will never feel bored or exhausted. All the important points are marked verbally and are sometimes repeated so that the learner can recall them easily.

Currently, I am doing my undergraduation in Computer Science Engineering from Terri college, Kurukshetra. This edX course is a must for everyone. I would recommend this course to novices as they can get hands-on training and experience with working code and develop their own code which they can tweak and use for their own projects afterwards.