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Intermediate

Practical Security: Simple Practices for Defending Your Systems

Gain insights into effective security techniques including patching, cryptography, and phishing prevention. Explore practices to make systems resistant and vulnerabilities more detectable, enhancing defense against attacks.

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Overview

Content

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It seems like hardly a week goes by without a high-profile computer breach. Why do these happen? How can you prevent them? This course doesn’t have all the answers, but it does outline practices that make life harder for attackers and that will help tide you over until you get a full-time security team in place. In this course, you will learn 5 simple, yet effective, techniques for preventing attackers from getting into your system. These techniques are related to: patching, software vulnerabilities, cryptography, windows security, and phishing. Within each chapter you will learn the best practices for preventing vulnerabilities and how to make them more detectable. This course is based on the Pragmatic Programmers’ book, Practical Security, and is aimed at developers, admins, team leads, architects, technology generalists, and all others who stand guard against the things that disrupt the network.

It seems like hardly a week goes by without a high-profile computer breach. Why do these happen? How can you prevent them? This ...Show More

Content

65 Lessons40 Quizzes

Introduction

2 Lessons

Get familiar with core security practices and essential tools for defending your systems.

Who Is This Course For?

What’s in This Course?

Patching

14 Lessons

Unpack the core of efficient patching strategies to safeguard against software vulnerabilities.

Introduction

Upgrading Third-Party Libraries and Software

A Closer Look at Patching

Library Inventory

Dependency Management: Python

Dependency Management: JavaScript

Automating Vulnerability Detection

Finding Published Vulnerabilities

Testing Your Patches

If Patching Hurts, Do It More Often

Vulnerabilities

20 Lessons

Examine software vulnerabilities, SQL injection, defensive coding, XSS, XSRF, and mitigating misconfigurations.

Introduction

Introduction to SQL

Challenge: Select The Journal

Solution Review: Select The Journal

More SQL Commands

Challenge: Write a Generalized Query

Solution Review: Write a Generalized Query

How SQL Injection Works

Extending the Defense Beyond Prepared Statements

Additional Defenses as a Mitigation Against Future Mistakes

Putting It All Together for a Robust Defense

Introduction to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

HTML Encoding

Defenses against XSS

Introduction to Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF)

XSRF Prevention with SameSite

Misconfiguration

Default Passwords & Credentials

Jenkins & Public-Facing Servers

What’s Next?

Cryptography

15 Lessons

Grasp the fundamentals of using established cryptographic libraries and secure password management techniques.

Introduction

Don’t Roll Your Own Crypto

Some Key Principles

Security When the Enemy Knows the System

Don’t Use Low-Level Crypto Libraries

ECB Malleability

CBC Is Still Malleable

Evaluating Crypto Libraries Without Being a Crypto Expert

Password Storage

More Techniques for Password Storage

Storing Passwords When You’re the Client

Minimizing the Cost of Credential Loss

Keeping Passwords Hard to Predict

TLS Configuration

What’s Next?

Windows

6 Lessons

Solve problems in Windows security, from user account management to password policies, Active Directory, and BitLocker.

Introduction

Password Policy

Active Directory: What Else Is It Good For?

BitLocker

What’s Next?

Phishing

8 Lessons

Focus on understanding phishing, its types, social and DNS-based defenses, and response strategies.

Introduction

Types of Phishing Attacks

Social Defense

DNS-Based Defense SPF

DNS-Based Defense: DKIM

DNS-Based Defense: DMARC

Authentication-Based Defense

Wrapping up!

Certificate of Completion

Showcase your accomplishment by sharing your certificate of completion.

Course Author:

The Pragmatic Programmers

Developed by MAANG Engineers

Every Educative lesson is designed by our in-house team of ex-MAANG software engineers and PhD computer science educators, and developed in consultation with developers and data scientists working at Meta, Google, and more. Our mission is to get you hands-on with the necessary skills to stay ahead in a constantly changing industry. No video, no fluff. Just interactive, project-based learning with personalized feedback that adapts to your goals and experience.

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Personalized Interview Prep

Skip the LeetCode grind with a custom roadmap that adapts to your goals. Hands-on practice for Coding Interviews, System Design, and more.

Mock Interviews

Test your skills in a simulated interview setting. Receive personalized feedback based on your performance. Available for Coding Interviews, System Design, and more.

AI Prompt

Build prompt engineering skills. Practice implementing AI-informed solutions.

Code Feedback

Evaluate and debug your code with the click of a button. Get real-time feedback on test cases, including time and space complexity of your solutions.

Explain with AI

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AI Code Mentor

AI Code Mentor helps you quickly identify errors in your code, learn from your mistakes, and nudge you in the right direction — just like a 1:1 tutor!

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