MVI Activities on Cyber Operations
The MVI has two activities related to cyber operations education and training. First, it offers a set of short courses to prepare students for professional certification exams. Secondly, it offers virtual labs to provide students with hands-on training related to cyber operations.
Hands-on Cyber Operations Training
- Reconnaissance Module: Exploring different types of automated scanners such as general-purpose port scanners, vulnerability scanners, and application-specific scanners (e.g., web server scanners).
- Password Auditing: Testing the strength of passwords using different tools (e.g., CPU- and/or GPU-based).
- Sniffing and Interacting with Network Traffic: Analyzing network traffic and interacting with it (e.g., by using Python’s Scapy library).
Certification Preparation Courses
We offer the courses in multiple sessions in 2024 and 2025. Each course takes approximately two months to complete. Below is the schedule.
2024:
- January Session: January 16 to March 10, 2024
- March Session: March 25 to May 19, 2024
- June Session: June 3 to July 28, 2024
- August Session: August 12 to October 6, 2024
- October Session: October 21 to December 15, 2024
2025:
- January Session: January 13 to March 9, 2025
- March Session: March 24 to May 18, 2025
- June Session: June 2 to July 27, 2025
The course covers the fundamental knowledge and skills in cybersecurity and develops the ability to examine and analyze cybersecurity for enterprises and government. Topics include cybersecurity principles, cryptography basics, threats and vulnerabilities, access control and identify management, networks, applications, data, and host security.
- course schedule: see above
- format: non-credit, online, offered through Canvas
This course prepares college students to begin a career working with associate-level cybersecurity analysts within security operations centers and trains students with fundamental knowledge and administrative skills in operating systems. It covers the core security concepts and skills needed to monitor, detect, analyze, and respond to cybercrime, cyberespionage, insider threats, advanced persistent threats, regulatory requirements, and other cybersecurity issues facing organizations. It emphasizes the practical application of the skills needed to maintain and ensure the security operational readiness of secure networked systems.
- course schedule: see above
- format: non-credit, online, offered through Canvas
This course covers OpenStack and other cloud platforms on topics including instance launch and deployment, management of projects, users, roles, quotas, networks, routers, addressing, images, flavors, block storage, and customization of an instance.
- course schedule: see above
- format: non-credit, online, offered through Canvas
This course covers the basics of penetration testing processes and tools, network protocols, network security, and scanning techniques, OS, web, database, and application security, malware analysis, and social engineering techniques. This course is designed for students with prior knowledge of cybersecurity fundamentals, network protocols, and administrative skills in operating systems.
- course schedule: see above
- format: non-credit, online, offered through Canvas