Online Undergraduate Certificate in IT Infrastructure Security

This course is a study of the evolution, the concepts, and the principles of local, distributed and enterprise networking. This course examines Network design, topologies, architecture, media, interface cards, protocols, problem resolution, communications, administration, operations, and resources. It introduces the student to the concepts of wireless networking, and web-based networks. This course also explores the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) and the Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Packet (TCP/IP) reference models. This course also examines internetworking servers, and hardware and operating systems maintenance.

This course is a study of the principles and concepts of Network Security from various aspects including but not limited to hardware, software, and other critical elements relating to the CIA Triad. There is an emphasis on standard Operating System (OS) functions and discovering vulnerabilities. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate an understating of methodologies and measures necessary to take a preventive stance to address security vulnerabilities. Students will examine the principles, practices, and policies related to hardening and securing Operating Systems. This course focuses on vulnerabilities and related countermeasures of various Windows components

This course examines the techniques and technologies for penetration of networks, detection of attacks, and prevention of attacks. This course addresses the techniques, the technologies, and the methodologies used by cyber intruders (hackers) to select a target and launch an attack. Students will gain insight into the motives and desired goals of hackers as well as effective tools and techniques used as countermeasures ensuring data assets remain secure. This course focuses on techniques and technologies to detect such attacks even while the attack is in progress; early detection enables the administrator to track the movements of the hacker and to discover the intent and goals of the hacker. This course assesses the various countermeasures to keep the system out of the “sights” of the hacker and to keep the hacker out of the perimeter of the target network. This course also explores the laws and the legal considerations in prosecuting computer crime.

This course explores Networking Security from the perspective of risk management and confirms that assessment of IP based Network systems is critical to developing strategies to mitigate and manage risks. This course focuses on effective assessment strategies that ultimately help the student to implement effective and proactive risk mitigation measures and risk management practices. It exposes the vulnerabilities of TCP/IP; and appraises risk assessment, risk analysis, risk mitigation, risk management, networking components and Virtual Private Networks (VPN). This course examines the tools and techniques used to attack, test and assure the security of the remote information, maintenance, FTP, database, email, UNIX RPC, and IP VPN services. The student will apply this knowledge to develop an assessment methodology that identifies, attacks, and penetrates IP based network systems.

This course allows the student to obtain the knowledge required to analyze and mitigate threats in the organizational network environment. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate a knowledge of both computer and network security, from the wetware (human), software, and hardware perspectives. The "wetware" component will deal with identification of potential risk situations, establishing policies for avoidance, recovery, and prosecution, and proactive measures to reduce causal factors for security breaches in an organization. The "software" perspective will examine types of inappropriate software activity, as well as asset protection issues (recognizing software assets). This component will also address software tools available to assist in reducing administrative costs due to both malicious and accidental loss. The "hardware" component will address hardware approaches to protecting assets, as well as hardware techniques used to compromise assets. Specific technologies discussed include firewalls, symmetric key encryption, public key encryption, digital certificates, and cryptographic systems (SSL/TLS, VPNs, and Kerberos).

This course is a study of Network Security attacks and countermeasures. This course examines various security technologies, such as: intrusion detection, authentication, session hijacking, sniffing, spoofing, denial of service, buffer overflow attack, port scanning, encryption, IPSec, DES encryption, triple DES encryption, message digest 5 algorithm, point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP), layer 2 tunneling protocol (L2TP), Kerberos, RSA Pretty Good Privacy(PGP), Secure Shell (SSH), Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), Network Address Translation (NAT), proxies, content filters, public/private keys, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Virtual Private Networks (VPN), security policies, security tokens, digital certificates, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, virus scanners, virus protection, vulnerability assessment, and vulnerability scanners.