It’s repeatedly stated that there is a huge need for cybersecurity professionals, and that demand currently outstrips supply. However, it still remains expensive to become qualified in cybersecurity.
Some unscrupulous training providers have latched onto these facts, and now advertise paid courses without warning how much programming is involved, and that companies will still expect their hires to have a record of industry experience.
In other words, the situation is being exploited while real expertise remains in short supply.
If you really are serious about training in IT security, you will ideally need to take a degree or other accredited course in computer science, in which you can choose networking and security topics to suit your career path.
However, there are other options available that you can try in order to test the waters and see whether the industry really is for you.
In this regard, there are a number of free taster courses online that will introduce some of the basics, but don’t expect these to turn you into an industry professional.
Even still, some of the free providers do also provide paid courses which are often cheaper than undergraduate study, and may allow not just for suitable training but also industry connections to help on your path.
Therefore if you really are interested in exploring cybersecurity, try some of these featured courses to get an idea of whether you might suit the industry, and vice versa, but do be aware that any free training will generally be quite limited.
1. Udemy
Typically, courses on Udemy cost money, but we’ve found a few worth checking out that won’t put a dent in your bank account. There’s a Cybersecurity law primer, for example, that we think could be beneficial to anyone wanting to know the ins and outs of cybersecurity ethics.
The Cybersecurity course for beginners – level one could also be advantageous to take, not only for cybersecurity enthusiasts but for anyone who want to learn more about the subject.
However, Udemy’s real selling point is that not only does it offer some very in-depth courses, many of these courses can be bought on offer for less than $20, making them extremely cost-effective.
Paid courses worth looking for for include Cyber Security Crash Course for Beginners:Learn From Scratch but there are also others to consider such as The Data Science Course 2019: Complete Data Science Bootcamp which will help provide an insight into the intricacies of computer science.
2. Cybrary
As the name suggests, Cybrary is an online library for cybersecurity, IT and other InfoSec-related study materials. After creating a free account, you get access to almost 500 courses, each ranked by their difficulty and all of them free.
You can filter classes by level – Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced – or by vendors like Cisco, (ISC)2 and Microsoft. Whether you want to learn the fundamentals of malware or the art of the Jedi mind trick, both of those curriculums are given equal prominence in Cybrary’s extensive course catalog.
3. US Department of Homeland Security
The US Department of Homeland Security is an obvious source of cybersecurity expertise, but you may not have been aware that you don’t have to travel all the way to the United States to benefit from the vast experience of US government security experts, or that you can do so for free.
The DHS has a calendar full of training events you can attend in Idaho Falls, but for everyone who doesn’t live in the midwestern US there’s an entire portal of online courses available to those involved in the security of industrial control systems.
4. Open Security Training
Its website looks like what you’d get if you took all the slideshows and teaching materials from a university cybersecurity department and uploaded them to a domain sporting the most minimalist user interface of all time, but Open Security Training is host to a range of intermediate and advanced classes, along with a swath of beginner lessons that any newbie would be a fool to pass up.
There’s a whole rundown on the x86 and x64 architectures wielded by Intel processors, along with introductions to topics along the lines of cellular security, network forensics and vulnerability assessment.
5. Sans Cyber Aces Online
It’s undeniably basic, and yet Sans Cyber Aces isn’t far off the mark when it says that it offers the best free online cybersecurity classes on the web.
After reading through a series of comprehensive entries about operating systems, networking and system administration, you can register for a quiz that puts your expertise to the test. Should highlighted talking points such as installing Linux virtual machine software or basic PHP, Bash and PowerShell web scripting pique your interest, you’ll be in for an engaging lecture.
6. Future Learn
The Introduction to Cyber Security course from Future Learn, owned by the UK-based Open University, is available to take at any time on any schedule, and is accredited by UK Government intelligence organization GCHQ, global accreditation and examination institute APMG International, and The Institute of Information Security Professionals.
Future Learn also offers a free three-week online course called Cyber Security: Safety at Home, Online, in Life, designed to teach the essentials of maintaining security and privacy online and at home.
However, FutureLearn courses tend to provide general overviews and introductions rather than detailed technical explorations of the subject, so don’t expect to need to learn Python programming in these courses.
7. The Daily Security Tip
It’s not exactly a class or an educational institute, at least by conventional standards. What The Daily Security Tip is, though, is an email-based learning tool produced by Heimdal Security that sends you a nugget of cybersecurity-related advice every day, with the ultimate goal of making you safer both online and off.
It’s completely free to sign up, and the creators of The Daily Security Tip claim that “there’s a 96% chance you’ll enjoy it”.
8. Heimdal Security
From the same firm that brought you The Daily Security tip comes Heimdal Security’s Cyber Security Course for Beginners. Although this, too, is email-based, its syllabus is significantly more extensive than that of The Daily Security Tip.
The Cyber Security Course for Beginners delivers a new lesson every two days for five weeks, and all without the need to pay back any tuition loans. In terms of content, it aims to give you step-by-step advice for keeping your personal data out of nefarious hands.
9. Coursera
More of a free trial than a free class, Coursera’s cybersecurity specialization was created by the University of Maryland to bring the underlying concepts of the construction of secure systems directly to your web browser.
It consists of five courses in total, each of which can take several weeks to complete. These range from Usable Security to a Cybersecurity Capstone Project, so it’s safe to say that they’ll require you to already have some intermediate cybersecurity know-how under your belt.
10. MOOCs
There are a couple of different places you can go to for a MOOC in cybersecurity. One worth highlighting is EdX which has a number of courses on cybersecurity at present, including IT Fundamentals for Business Prossionals, and Building a Cybersecurity Webkit. There are also other courses detailed at MOOC-List.