Gain insights into cyber security fundamentals, explore common threats, discover protection mechanisms like firewalls, learn monitoring and response strategies, and develop secure systems as a developer.

Modern computer systems are almost universally connected, which creates wider attack surfaces well beyond code to users, hardware, and more. Securing systems is thus a fundamental skill for modern software engineers.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to cyber security best practices. You’ll start with an overview of common threats and vulnerabilities, as well as high-level concepts like privilege, integrity, logging, and mediation. With these concepts in mind, you’ll then learn common protection mechanisms and defense strategies from endpoint protection to firewalls, gateways, and proxy servers. Next, you’ll learn monitoring and detection techniques, alerts, and event management. Finally, when you detect a threat, you’ll know how to respond with support tickets, data preservation, and change management.

By the end of this course, you’ll have a better understanding of modern cyber security practices and a clear roadmap to implementing these as a developer.

Cyber Security Best Practices for Developers

# Types of endpoints

The days of a heterogeneous environment are gone. Endpoints come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including:

- Servers

- Desktops

- Laptops

- Mobile phones

- Tablets



# Operating systems

Just as an endpoint’s form factor can vary greatly, so can the operating systems running on those devices, which include:

- MacOS

- Android

- Chrome OS

- Apple iOS

- Windows Mobile OS

- Various distributions of Linux

Add the explosive growth of cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT), and the final result is controlled chaos. Yet all of this somehow has to work together and facilitate productivity securely.



# Ensure the seamless operation of resources 

Though the IT landscape continues to grow more complex and fragmented, security fundamentals still apply.

## Protection solutions

Protection solutions that can be installed on an endpoint include: 

- Anti virus (AV) 

- Endpoint detection and response (EDR)

- File integrity checks (FIC) 

While each offers a different approach to protection in support of a defense in depth strategy, there’s still the challenge of ensuring that several solutions can coexist peacefully on the same device.


## Manage conflicts between resources 

Software conflicts can cause performance degradations, errors, and other issues that can be frustrating for end users. Some compatibility issues may even cause security controls to work incorrectly or fail entirely. Therefore, we need to pay attention to the interoperability of the endpoint protection software, the operating system, and the applications that need to run. Issues like these may even affect the choice of security solutions deployed to endpoints.


Learn to use practical reasoning and techniques to maximize the effectiveness of security resources to protect an organization's devices.

Introduction

Basics of Security

Detect

Protect

Respond

Conclusion

Endpoint Protection

Types of endpoints

Operating systems