ISACA Offers New Courses to Build Cybersecurity Expertise

Hackers are getting smarter every day, constantly devising new methods of attacking both computer networks and individual machines. You may not have had a hacker directly affect your life, but the indirect effects of their neverending war on information security are felt all around us. How many passwords do you keep track of now, compared to, say, 20 years ago?

There are ongoing attempts to fight back, of course, not the least of which is an industry-wide effort in the information technology (IT) realm to advance the cause of training and employing legions of new skilled cybersecurity professionals. The more people there are working to advance the cause of cybersecurity, the better off we will all be.

One major effort to increase cybersecurity expertise is the Cybersecurity Nexus (CSX) program launched by security and governance association ISACA in 2015. The CSX program has focused on providing self-paced online training that addresses real-world scenarios and teaches practical skills.

The latest new development with CSX was announced last week: A comprehensive approach to entry-level cybersecurity training that spreads across three new training courses and offers four certificates to individual who successfully complete their training. Dubbed the CSX Foundation Series, the new offerring is intended to help cybersecurity newcomers skill up and prepare for more advanced specializations.

The three news CSX Foundation Series training courses are described by ISACA as follows:

? CSX Packet Analysis: Students work with real network traffic captures in real environments and analyze different communication types and their components.
? CSX Network Application and Configuration: Students interact with live traffic in a network environment, and learn how to direct, create and deny traffic as it flows through a network of their creation and moderation.
? CSX Linux Application and Configuration: Through interacting with live systems in a real environment, students learn key commands, create user accounts and items, establish network connections, and learn the secrets of the Linux terminal.

Each of the course confers a certificate to students who complete it. A fourth certificate, the CSX Technical Foundations Certificate, is available to anyone who completes all three courses. Each course is available at a cost of $250 for ISACA members, or $450 for nonmembers. Those wishing to bundle all three courses can get a discounted rate of $600 for ISACA members, or $960 for nonmembers.

ISACA has also kept its other CSX initiatives in motion. At the same time as their announcement of the new Foundation Series, ISACA rolled out the newest version of its exam for the CSX Practitioner certification. As described by ISACA, CSX Practitioner (CSXP) is "the only comprehensive performance certification that tests an individual's ability to perform globally validated cybersecurity skills spanning five security functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover."

Additional details about all aspects of CSX training and certification are available online.