Cybersecurity · Beginner
Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking Fundamentals
Free Cybersecurity Course for beginners: learn networking, Linux, ethical hacking fundamentals, authorized penetration-testing workflows, vulnerability assessment, system hardening and security monitoring. Every practical activity uses fictional examples or explicitly authorized training labs. Includes 56 guided lessons, five 12-question checkpoint quizzes, a 40-question final exam and a verifiable completion certificate.
56 steps, written for someone starting from zero: the lessons plus a checkpoint quiz task after every ten. Each lesson opens with a starting point you have to change, not the finished answer. Work through it in order and you finish with a program you wrote yourself — the kind of thing you can show in an interview, not a certificate you bought.
Security principles, ethics and safe practice
Understand core security goals, permission, risk, identity and safe operational habits.
- 1 Security goals: confidentiality, integrity and availability Cybersecurity —
- 2 Threats, vulnerabilities and risk Cybersecurity —
- 3 Authorization, scope and rules of engagement Cybersecurity —
- 4 Responsible disclosure and evidence handling Cybersecurity —
- 5 Security policies and least privilege Cybersecurity —
- 6 Asset inventory and data classification Cybersecurity —
- 7 Authentication and multi-factor authentication Cybersecurity —
- 8 Password managers and passphrases Cybersecurity —
- 9 Phishing and social engineering Cybersecurity —
- 10 Backups, updates and recovery basics Cybersecurity —
Networking foundations
Read network concepts, protocols, service boundaries and diagrams.
- 11 Network models and encapsulation Cybersecurity —
- 12 IP addresses, subnets and private ranges Cybersecurity —
- 13 MAC addresses and local delivery Cybersecurity —
- 14 Ports and common services Cybersecurity —
- 15 DNS lookups and name resolution Cybersecurity —
- 16 DHCP and address assignment Cybersecurity —
- 17 TCP, UDP and connection behavior Cybersecurity —
- 18 HTTP, HTTPS and TLS basics Cybersecurity —
- 19 Firewalls and allow rules Cybersecurity —
- 20 Reading a network diagram Cybersecurity —
Linux administration and hardening
Build safe Linux familiarity, permissions, services, logs and baseline hardening.
- 21 Linux files, paths and directories Cybersecurity —
- 22 Linux users, groups and identities Cybersecurity —
- 23 Linux permissions: read, write and execute Cybersecurity —
- 24 Safe use of sudo Cybersecurity —
- 25 Processes and services Cybersecurity —
- 26 Logs and timestamps Cybersecurity —
- 27 Package updates and trusted repositories Cybersecurity —
- 28 SSH access and key hygiene Cybersecurity —
- 29 Shell pipelines and command safety Cybersecurity —
- 30 Linux hardening checklist Cybersecurity —
Ethical penetration-testing fundamentals
Learn the authorized assessment workflow and safe validation and reporting.
- 31 Penetration testing stages Cybersecurity —
- 32 Passive reconnaissance and public information Cybersecurity —
- 33 Service discovery in an authorized lab Cybersecurity —
- 34 Web request and response anatomy Cybersecurity —
- 35 Input validation and trust boundaries Cybersecurity —
- 36 Access control checks Cybersecurity —
- 37 Secure configuration review Cybersecurity —
- 38 Password storage concepts Cybersecurity —
- 39 Session cookies and secure flags Cybersecurity —
- 40 Safe vulnerability validation Cybersecurity —
Vulnerability assessment and remediation
Prioritize, document and remediate weaknesses with business context.
- 41 Writing a clear finding Cybersecurity —
- 42 Vulnerability, severity and business impact Cybersecurity —
- 43 Asset and vulnerability inventory Cybersecurity —
- 44 Patch management and change windows Cybersecurity —
- 45 Secure defaults and configuration baselines Cybersecurity —
- 46 Endpoint protection and device hygiene Cybersecurity —
Security monitoring and defensive capstone
Practice alert triage, incident handling, metrics and a defensive review.
- 47 Security monitoring and alert triage Cybersecurity —
- 48 Indicators of compromise and context Cybersecurity —
- 49 Incident response roles and escalation Cybersecurity —
- 50 Containment, preservation and recovery Cybersecurity —
- 51 Security metrics and a monitoring dashboard Cybersecurity —
- 52 Capstone: a defensive security review Cybersecurity —
- 53 Log sources and collection Cybersecurity —
- 54 Alert tuning and false positives Cybersecurity —
- 55 Security monitoring metrics Cybersecurity —
- 56 Defensive security review capstone Cybersecurity —
Final exam and certificate
40 questions from the whole track. Pass mark is 60%. Retakes are free and the best score is the one printed on your certificate.
Create a free account to take the exam