CYS405

This course covers the study of techniques used by hackers to break into an organization. It gives students the necessary tools to have a hacker mind-set in order to protect networks against future attacks. It gives an introduction to the principles and techniques associated with the cybersecurity practice known as penetration testing or ethical hacking. This course illustrates the differences between ethical and unethical penetration testing, and describes the phases of a penetration test including planning, reconnaissance, scanning, exploitation, post-exploitation, and result reporting. Students will be able to apply different tools and methods to conduct penetration tests for the purpose of discovering how system vulnerabilities can be exploited and learn to avoid such problems.

• Evaluate the differences between ethical and unethical penetration testing
• Discuss the lifecycle of cybersecurity attacks, including attack concepts, phases, methodologies, and tools from an ethical hacking perspective
• Conduct experiments on how to test IT infrastructure and information systems for vulnerabilities to malicious attack
• Examine different cybersecurity attacks and their countermeasures
• Apply different penetration testing tools to review/evaluate the security of a given system