Advanced Cyber Education (ACE)

As part of this pathway, learners will take SANS SEC560 Enterprise Penetration Testing, which prepares participants to conduct successful penetration testing for a modern enterprise, including on-premise systems, Azure, and Azure AD. Students will learn the methodology and techniques used by penetration testers in large organizations to identify and exploit vulnerabilities at scale and show real business risk to your organization. Learners will have the opportunity to complete the GIAC Penetration Tester (GPEN) certification following completion of the course.

As part of this pathway, learners will take SANS FOR508 Advanced Incident Response, Threat Hunting and Digital Forensics, which teaches advanced skills to hunt, identify, counter, and recover from a wide range of threats within enterprise networks, including APT nation-state adversaries, organized crime syndicates, and ransomware operators. Learners will have the opportunity to complete the GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA) certification following completion of the course.

As part of this pathway, learners will take SANS SEC504 Hacker Tools, Techniques, and Incident Handling, which provides participants the skills to conduct incident response investigations. Students will learn to develop a dynamic incident response process and threat intelligence process to mount effective defense strategies for cloud and on-premises platforms. Students will learn how attackers scan, exploit, pivot, and establish persistence in cloud and conventional systems. 50% of class time is spent on hands-on exercises, using visual association tools to break down complex topics. Learners will have the opportunity to complete the GIAC Certified Incident Handler (GCIH) certification following completion of the course.

As part of this pathway, learners will take SANS SEC510 Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, and GCP, which provides participants with in-depth understanding of the inner workings of the most popular public cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. SEC510 leverages industry-renowned standards and methodologies, such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Cloud Foundations Benchmarks, MITRE ATT&CK Cloud Matrix, and Cyber Defense Matrix alongside original research. Students will then apply that knowledge through hands-on exercises in real cloud environments for each provider, launching unhardened services, analyzing their security configurations, validating that they are insufficiently secure, deploying patches, and validating the remediation. 

Students will leave the course confident that they have the knowledge they need to support their organization’s adoption of Platform as a Service (PaaS) / Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings in each cloud. Learners will have the opportunity to complete the GIAC Public Cloud Security (GPCS) certification following completion of the course.

As part of this pathway, learners will take SANS SEC595 Applied Data Science and AI/Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Professionals, which provides participants with a crash-course introduction to practical data science, statistics, probability, and machine learning. The course is structured as a series of short discussions with extensive hands-on labs that help students to develop useful intuitive understandings of how these concepts relate and can be used to solve real-world security problems. Learners will have the opportunity to complete the GIAC Machine Learning Engineer (GMLE) certification following completion of the course.

As part of this pathway, learners will take SANS SEC573 Automating Information Security with Python — an immersive, self-paced, hands-on, and lab-intensive course. After covering the essentials required for people who have never coded before, the course will present learners with real-world forensics, defensive, and offensive challenges. Learners will develop a malware dropper for an offensive operation; learn to search your logs for the latest attacks; develop code to carve forensics artifacts from memory, hard drives, and packets; automate the interaction with an online website’s API; and write a custom packet sniffer. Learners will have the opportunity to complete the GIAC Python Coder (GPYC) certification following completion of the course.