Gamified Intelligent Cyber Aptitude and Skills Training (GICAST)

Overview

Our lives depend on online services. Gain essential cyber security knowledge and skills, to help protect your digital life.We shop online. We work online. We play online. We live online. As our lives increasingly depend on digital services, the need to protect our information from being maliciously disrupted or misused is really important. TranscriptThis free course, Gamified Intelligent Cyber Aptitude and Skills Training (GICAST), will help you to understand online security and start to protect your digital life, whether at home or work. You will learn how to recognise the threats that could harm you online and the steps you can take to reduce the chances that they will happen to you.With cyber security often in the news today, the course will also frame your online safety in the context of the wider world, introducing you to different types of malware, including viruses and trojans, as well as concepts such as network security, cryptography, identity theft and risk management.This course has been developed by The Open University with support from the UK Government's National Cyber Security Programme and can be accessed free of charge.Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation - which also displays your Open University badge.The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation.A YouTube channel has been created with some supporting materials for this course, including a full demo of using the course, and other cyber security news. You can find the channel here: GICAST YouTube channel.This course is accredited by the CPD Standards Office. It can be used to provide evidence of continuing professional development and on successful completion of the course you will be awarded 24 CPD points. Evidence of your CPD achievement is provided on the free Statement of Participation awarded on completion.Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation..RequirementsThe course does not assume any prior knowledge of computer security and can be enjoyed by anyone interested in improving the security of their digital information.

Syllabus

Introduction and guidance
Introduction and guidance
What is a badged course?
How to get a badge
Acknowledgements
Week1Week 1: Threat landscape
Introduction
1 Online, the new frontline
1.1 Talking security: the basics
1.2 Obtaining Sophos Threatsaurus
1.3 Cyber security attacks and phishing
1.4 Examples of high profile cyber security breaches
1.5 Taking stock of your information assets
1.6 What are your own safeguards?
2 Understanding current threats
2.1 Identifying vulnerable systems
2.2 How to keep up to date
2.3 Staying informed
3 Securing my digital information
3.1 Threats to your assets
4 Week 1 quiz
5 Summary of Week 1
Further reading
References
Acknowledgements
Week2Week 2: Authentication
Introduction
1 Passwords: what are they for?
1.1 What happens when you enter a password?
1.2 Attacking passwords
1.3 Salt to protect
2 Improving password security
2.1 How to pick a proper password
2.2 Checking the strength of a password
2.3 Password managers
2.4 Installing and using a password manager
2.5 Alternatives to using password managers
3 Two-factor authentication
3.1 Setting up two-factor authentication
3.1.1 Two-factor authentication on Google
3.1.2 Two-factor authentication on Facebook
3.1.3 Other two-factor authentication services
3.2 Other services supporting two-factor authentication
4 Week 2 quiz
5 Summary of Week 2
Further reading
Acknowledgements
Week3Week 3: Malware
Introduction
1 Viruses
1.1 Worms
1.2 Trojans
1.3 Defining terms
2 How malware gets into your computer
2.1 What is malware for?
2.2 Phishing
2.3 Trapping phishing emails
2.4 Spotting a phishing email
2.5 Emails are not the only phish
2.6 The role of malware in click fraud
2.7 Botnets
2.8 Confessional
3 Keeping yourself protected
3.1 Antivirus software
3.2 Installing antivirus software
3.3 Keeping your software up to date
3.4 End-of-life software
3.5 Sandboxes and code signing
4 Week 3 quiz
5 Summary of Week 3
Further reading
References
Acknowledgements
Week4Week 4: Networking and communications
Introduction
1 What is the internet?
1.1 How data moves around the internet
1.2 Introducing the datagram
1.3 Datagrams on the move
1.4 Wireless networks
2 Is your private information really private?
2.1 Network security challenges
2.2 Encryption in wireless networking
2.3 Using wireless networking securely
3 Why we need standards on the internet
3.1 Introducing the TCP/IP protocols
3.2 The internet protocol and IP addresses
3.3 From numbers to names
3.4 The internet is not the world wide web
4 Week 4 quiz
5 Summary of Week 4
Acknowledgements
Week5Week 5: Cryptography
Introduction
1 The secret of keeping secrets
1.1 Plaintext and ciphertext
1.2 Encryption keys
1.3 The key distribution problem
1.4 Asymmetric or public key cryptography
1.5 Why isn’t the internet encrypted?
2 Putting cryptography to use
2.1 Setting up a PGP email client
2.2 Sending signed and encrypted email
3 Comparing different cryptographic techniques
3.1 Using cryptography to prove identity
3.2 Digital signatures and certificates
3.3 Encrypted network connections
3.4 How secure is your browsing?
4 Week 5 quiz
5 Summary of Week 5
Acknowledgements
Week6Week 6: Network security
Introduction
1 Firewall basics
1.1 Personal firewalls
1.2 Configuring your own firewall
1.3 Do you need a firewall for your smartphone?
2 VPN basics
2.1 Securing the tunnels
2.2 Security risks of VPN
2.3 Putting VPN to work
3 Intrusion detection system (IDS)
3.1 IDS techniques
3.2 Honeypots
3.3 Web Application Firewall (WAF)
4 Week 6 quiz
5 Summary of Week 6
Further reading
Acknowledgements
Week7Week 7: When your defences fail
Introduction
1 Identity theft
1.1 Loss of data
1.2 Risks of data loss
2 Laws and computers
2.1 The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA)
2.2 The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA)
2.3 The Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA)
2.4 The Fraud Act 2006
2.5 Lawful Business Practice Regulations
2.6 Cyber security and the law
2.7 Cyber security in the EU
2.8 What laws apply in your country?
3 Who should you contact?
3.1 Getting your computer working again
Recovering from a virus or other malware
Recovering from accidentally deleting a file
Recovering from a lost computer, disk or flash memory drive containing confidential data
Recovering from an operating system failure
3.2 Making your information less vulnerable
3.3 Protecting your data for the future
3.4 Backup media
3.5 Remote backups
3.6 Do you back up your data?
3.7 Archiving data
4 Week 7 quiz
5 Summary of Week 7
Further reading
References
Acknowledgements
Week8Week 8: Managing security risks
Introduction
1 Information as an asset
1.1 Your own information assets
1.2 Risk analysis
1.3 Risk analysis in practice
2 Staying safe online
2.1 Fix your browser
2.2 Risk management in practice
2.3 Protecting your information assets
2.4 What should I do next?
2.5 Tracking a moving target
3 What do you do now?
3.1 Confessional
4 End-of-course quiz
5 End-of-course guide and round-up
6 Next steps
Tell us what you think
Acknowledgements