Security is not a product you buy. This course covers the real mechanics — phishing, credential theft, ransomware, misconfiguration — and the controls that stop them, in the order of how much difference they make.
Defensive only. We do not teach attack tooling, and we are explicit about why: the point of this course is to make you employable and useful, not to hand out weapons.
Jobs this leads towards
Real roles people do after this course and the ones that follow it.
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Security analyst
Watches for attacks on a company's systems and works out which alerts are real.
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IT technician with security duties
Most small organisations have no security team — the IT person is it.
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Security awareness lead
Teaches colleagues how not to get fooled, which stops more attacks than any software.
Certifications
What this course prepares you to sit. Exam vouchers are included.
- CompTIA Security+
Is this for me?
Ninety seconds, no wrong answers, nothing recorded. It tells you how closely this course matches what you enjoy — and where to look if it does not.
Try it — two minutes
The kind of thing you would actually do in this course. Nothing is saved; it is just to see if you enjoy it.
What a week looks like
Day to day, so nobody is surprised.
- Two evenings a week: attacks explained, then defences built.
- A lab machine you are allowed to break into, and a defended one you have to protect.
- Real-world cases each week: what went wrong, what would have stopped it.
- Practice exams from halfway through.
Three questions from week one
Get them wrong and you belong here. Get them right and you belong here too. Nothing is recorded.
Books worth having
None of these is required — the course lends what it needs. These are the ones worth owning.
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CompTIA Security+ Get Certified Get Ahead
Darril Gibson
Straight to the point and matched to the exam.
Find it ↗ -
Professor Messer's Security+ videos (free, YouTube)
Watch ahead of each class.
What to bring
Usually nothing. Where something small helps, it is here.
- ▸A laptop that can run a virtual machine (8 GB RAM or more; we lend them).
- ▸A hardware security key if you can (about $25) — you will use it for real.
- ▸A notebook for the things you would never type into a computer.
Do this at home
Between sessions. Ten to twenty minutes; the people who do this are the ones who finish.
- Habit 1Turn on two-factor authentication on every account you own. Every one.
- Habit 2Read one security news story a day and write down the mistake.
- Habit 3Run a password manager and move your accounts into it, five a day.
What you will be able to do
- Explain how the common attacks work, step by step
- Harden an endpoint and an account against the realistic threats
- Read a security alert and decide whether it matters
- Apply least privilege and defence in depth to a small network
- Write and test an incident response checklist
What you will use
- Microsoft Defender
- CrowdStrike Falcon
- Entra ID
- MFA tooling
What the course covers
The lesson plan for this course is being written. Register and we will tell you the moment it opens.