Google Cybersecurity Course Offers Hands-on Security Experience
One problem with IT and cybersecurity certifications is they often wind up teaching and measuring textbook knowledge and maybe a little strategy, but not so much the hands-on experience required to actually do an IT job.
There are some exceptions. EC-Council’s Certified Network Defender (CND) program, for example, includes about 80 hands-on labs — but pricing starts at $2199 for the on-demand version, and $3499 for the live instructor-led course. For someone who wants to break into cybersecurity, that might be a very good route, but one that would require a significant commitment of time and money.
A much cheaper option for hands-on cybersecurity experience is Google’s Cybersecurity Professional Certificate, a series of eight courses offered through Coursera. For the price of an annual Coursera Plus membership (as low as $199 with a discount), you could probably finish that Google program and more. It may not have the cachet of the CND or the well known CompTIA Security+, but it will give you enough hands-on experience and knowledge to give you a feel for security tools and tasks — and to know if a cybersecurity career is right for you.
The Google program is most targeted at those hoping to become an entry-level security analyst in a security operations center (SOC), although anyone looking for a good introduction to enterprise security would be hard-pressed to find a better resource.
Gaining Experience with Security Tools
The Google Cybersecurity program covers many of the basics that other security certifications do, but it’s the hands-on virtual labs that make it stand out. Course units offer an introduction to Linux, SQL, and network security tools, and one of the eight courses is entirely dedicated to automating security tasks with Python.
The sixth course, on Detection and Response, offers an introduction to common network and security tools, with an emphasis on the skills and documentation needed for successful incident investigation and response. Students learn to use Wireshark and tcpdump for network monitoring, packet capture and analysis. They learn to create SHA-256 hash files and analyze them for malware using VirusTotal.
Other Detection and Response course modules offer an introduction to intrusion detection tools, log management, and security information and event management (SIEM), using the open source Suricata intrusion detection and prevention system, Splunk, and Google’s own Chronicle SIEM system. By using Google’s Qwiklabs cloud environment, students can learn basic commands for network traffic and log analysis using a Bash shell and other tools.
The view students get is of the underpinnings of network security, the protocols, commands and file formats needed for basic incident investigation. Ideally many of these things would be handled by advanced automation tools, but knowing what goes on at the protocol and log level is important to know for the inevitable incident investigations.
Google’s Cybersecurity Professional Certificate won’t completely prepare you for a career in cybersecurity, but it will give you a very good foundation for further exploration and learning. As cybersecurity certifications go, it’s one of the better introductory ones I’ve seen, and at a reasonable price too.
Using the Cloud for Hands-on IT Training
I’ll close with a general comment about IT training and certification: Google may have a smaller cloud market share than rivals AWS and Azure, but it uses its cloud environment very well to offer a hands-on training component to its IT courses.
Google’s Cloud Skills Boost portal offers free training to encourage IT pros to obtain Google cloud certifications. On Coursera, Google allows students to take that same hands-on approach in a wide range of areas, such as networking, data analytics, and more.