This educational content provides a comprehensive overview of key security concepts, terminology, models, and best practices needed to understand and apply cybersecurity principles. It covers foundational ideas such as the CIA triad, risk management, controls, governance, threat actors, access controls, data protection, cryptography, availability, risk treatment, frameworks, common misconceptions, and practical scenarios to enhance security literacy.
If the exam blueprint was your map, this is the legend. Without the legend, you’re just staring at symbols like “uh… dragon?” when it’s actually “firewall.” We already scoped the SY0-701 journey in the orientation. Now we’re loading the language pack. These terms are the verbs and nouns you’ll use ...
The bedrock of security goals is the CIA triad: Confidentiality : Only the right people see the data. Examples: encryption, access controls, screen privacy filters Villains: eavesdropping, data leakage, shoulder surfing Integrity : Data stays accurate and unaltered (unless authorized). Examples...
Let’s break the toxic relationship between these words: Asset : Anything valuable (data, systems, reputation, your sanity). Threat : Something with the potential to cause harm (attacker, storm, bug, insider oopsie). Vulnerability : A weakness that could be exploited (unpatched OS, weak config, de...
Controls come in two flavors simultaneously: what they are and what they do. By category (what they are): Administrative (policies, training, hiring practices) Technical (firewalls, EDR, encryption) Physical (locks, guards, cameras) By function (what they do): Preventive (stop it): MFA, input ...
Policy : High-level “what we believe and require.” Mandatory. Standard : Specific requirements to meet policy (e.g., “AES-256 for data at rest”). Baseline : Minimum acceptable configuration (hardened image). Procedure : Step-by-step how-to (SOP). Repeatable. Guideline : Recommended but flexible....
Script kiddies : Use others’ tools; loud but real. Hacktivists : Political/social motive. Insiders : Accidental or malicious; hardest to catch. Organized crime : Profit-driven, polished ops. Nation-states/APTs : Patient, resourced, unsettlingly good. Attack surface : All the ways in—open ports,...
Least privilege : Only what’s needed to do the job. No admin “just in case.” Need-to-know : Limit access to specific data, even if you have the role. Separation of duties : Split critical tasks among people (request vs approve). Job rotation : Rotate roles to reduce fraud and share knowledge. Im...
PII/PHI : Personal/health data. Handle gently. Data lifecycle : Create → Store → Use → Share → Archive → Destroy. Classification : Public, Internal, Confidential, Restricted (names vary). Labeling and handling : The label dictates controls (encryption, DRM, DLP policies). If you can’t classify i...
Redundancy : Multiple of a thing (RAID, HA pairs). Resilience : Ability to take a hit and keep moving (autoscaling, DR sites). RTO/RPO : Time to restore / how much data loss is acceptable. Fail-safe vs fail-secure : Fail-safe: Prioritize safety (doors unlock in a fire). Fail-secure: Prioritize s...
Avoid : Don’t do the risky thing (no BYOD, no crypto-mining in prod). Powerful, unpopular. Mitigate : Add controls to reduce likelihood/impact (patches, MFA, segmentation). Transfer : Insurance, outsourcing, cloud contracts (remember: shared responsibility ≠ no responsibility). Accept : Document ...
8 study modes available based on your content