In this article, we try to outline some of the best online cyber security courses that are free to help you reach the appropriate content in the pursuit of self-improvement in cyber security.
Why Self-Learning Matters in Cyber Security?
Self-learning is an import skill that can help you become an adapt cyber security professional and keep your knowledge up-to-date and stay relevant in the ever-changing world of IT and cyber security.
As information becomes ubiquitous, technology plays a powerful part in accelerating our ability to access this knowledge. Thanks to the advances in Internet and information technology (IT), today we have access to a tremendous amounts of information on lots of online resources. However, this improvement in the technology also becomes a challenge in the world of self-learning. How to choose the most accurate, through and appropriate online resources to learn more on our own?
In this article, we try to outline some of the best online cyber security courses that are free to help you reach the appropriate content in the pursuit of self-improvement.
If you think you know-it-all about cybersecurity, this discipline was probably ill-explained to you.
Stephane Nappo
Read more educational and inspirational cyber quotes at our page 100+ Best Cyber Security & Hacker Quotes.
How to Make Your Self-Learning Process a Joyful Journey?
But before beginning, below is a quick guide to make your self-learning more successful and enjoy the journey.
- Be Curious: Intense curiosity and an appetite to learn is not only fundamental to the success of any learning method, they are also considered as indispensable traits to be possessed by cyber security professionals. So, be curious and eager to learn.
- Set Goals: Goal setting is extremely important to help you increase productivity and improve your focus. So, have clear objectives and set daily goals in your self-learning journey.
- Make Use of the Information that You’ve Learned: One of the strategies to solidify the information that you’ve learned is to use them. In this respect, make a habit of using the new information in practice.
- Build a Network of Learners Around You: As humans, we rarely grow alone. In this journey, it super helpful to become a part of a learning community, not only to learn from the others, but also teach each other and solidify what we’ve learnt. Don’t forget the fact that “While we teach, we learn“.
Best Online Course Platforms
Coursera
Coursera is a distance learning platform that offers lots of courses in a wide variety of disciplines, including cyber security and IT. Courses are taught by top instructors from world-class universities and companies.
- Difficulty Level: All Levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
- Rich Course Catalogue
- Price: Free / Paid
- Certificates: Yes (Only for Paid Courses)
- Collaboration with Other Learners: Yes
- Course Content: Video, Lecture Notes, and Online Labs
- Tests / Assignments: Yes
- Course Schedule: Scheduled or Self-paced
Its cyber security related course catalogue includes classes such as, introduction to cyber security, cryptography, software security, hardware security, security governance, usable security etc. to name only a few.
Coursera provides courses in the categories of beginner to intermediate and advanced levels, tailored according to the skill levels of the learners. However, most of the offered courses are beginner level or intermediate.
Courses are either offered as single courses or as specializations. If you want to master a specific topic, consider enrolling in a specialization where you’ll complete a series of rigorous courses on your own. For instance, the “Cybersecurity Specialization” offered by University of Maryland includes 4 different courses: Cryptography, Software Security, Hardware Security and Usable Security.
Most of the courses are open to free learners to follow, but certificates are only offered upon completing paid courses. In order to be entitled to the course certificates, learners also need to be successful at the weekly and end-of-the-course tests. In some courses, learners are also expected to complete some homework or assignments that are usually checked and rated by other learners.
Professor Messer
Professor Messer is a great platform for those who want to break into cyber security but don’t know where to start from.
- Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
- Rich Course Catalogue
- Price: Free
- Certificates: No
- Collaboration with Other Learners: No
- Course Content: High Quality Video and/or Lecture Notes
- Tests / Assignments: No
- Course Schedule: Self-paced
Professor Messer provides free certification training courses for those who want to learn the fundamentals of cyber security and get prepared for an entry level certification. Currently, training courses for CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, and CompTIA Security+ are offered.
All of the offered courses are free but training certification is not supported. Course materials include lecture slides and/or videos be followed on your own pace with no collaboration with other learners. For the pros, the training videos are of high quality with respect to the training content and presentation.
Open Security Training
As its name implies, Open Security Training is a training platform that offers free computer classes, on a lot of topics.
- Difficulty Level: All Levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
- Rich Course Catalogue
- Price: Free
- Certificates: No
- Collaboration with Other Learners: No
- Course Content: Low Quality Video and/or Lecture Notes
- Tests / Assignments: No
- Course Schedule: Self-paced
Open Security Training provides courses in cryptography, secure coding, hacking and intrusion detection, reverse engineering, malware analysis, software exploits etc. to name only a few. All these courses are listed under three proficiency categories of beginner, intermediate and advanced.
All of the offered courses are free but training certification is not supported. Course materials include lecture slides and/or videos be followed on your own pace with no collaboration with other learners. For the downside, the site is not maintained and some of the training materials could be out-of-date.
Other Online Courses
- Splunk Fundamentals 1: Learn how to search and navigate in Splunk, use fields, get statistics from data, create reports, dashboards, lookups, and alerts.
- Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Online Training Course: Learn CVSS 3.1 (Distinguish among Base, Temporal, and Environmental metrics, identify CVSS scoring rubric, use the CVSS 3.1 calculator etc.)
- Kali Linux Revealed: Learn Kali Linux through online training exercises. Also a free training book is provided by the Offensive Security. Course content includes: Linux fundamentals, installing and configuring Kali, securing and monitoring Kali, Debian package management, advanced usage of Kali etc.
As ourselves also being life-long learners, we would like to learn from you by sharing comments below or reaching us via the contact form to improve our ever-improving content in the ever-changing world of cyber security.
You could also read our popular articles What is a Security Vulnerability? or What is Vulnerability Scanning?
