(ISC)² adds new cybersecurity courses to its Professional Development Institute portfolio

(ISC)² continued to build out its Professional Development Institute (PDI) portfolio in 2020, which now includes 40 courses. These comprehensive online courses are developed to help the workforce continue to learn about the latest cybersecurity trends, practices and issues.

Courses are accessible to (ISC)² members and associates via My Courses at no cost, as a benefit of their membership, and can be purchased by non-members at www.isc2.org/development.

(ISC)² established PDI in February 2018 to deliver training opportunities beyond certification that keep cybersecurity professionals in step with the latest changes in the field. Member subject matter experts guide the development of PDI course material.

To date, 60,000 courses have been completed and 200,000 continuing professional education (CPE) credits have been awarded to (ISC)² members and associates. More than $20 million in equivalent professional development value has been provided in less than two years as a benefit of membership.

“In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen the demand for online professional development opportunities skyrocket,” said (ISC)² Education Director Mirtha Collin.

“PDI has been there to help members fulfill their continued learning goals and we’ve been excited to see the high level of engagement from members and the wider market as well. A lot of credit goes to our committed member experts for continuing to develop timely content, for which we’re grateful.”

Immersive courses

• Conducting practical risk analysis for security professionals – provides practical experience working through risk assessment, analysis, mitigation, remediation and communication and helps security professionals acquire skills needed to holistically examine operational risk management, learn to work cross-functionally, determine how to use risk data effectively and disseminate actionable information and findings.

Express learning courses

• Utilizing big data – provides an overview of Big Data components, architectures and applications and teaches learners how to apply the concept of data flows to gain insights for defending organizations by successfully managing and analyzing large amounts of data
• When ethics meets artificial intelligence (AI) – explores the history of AI and the related ethical principles and offers select thought experiments to modern issues and technology, including AI. Learners consider the role ethics plays in the development and uses of AI and examine the ways bias and fairness will help to shape the role of AI in future applications.

Lab courses

• Security analysis with SPARTA – reviews and applies internal security assessments and blue team penetration testing by using SPARTA on an unfamiliar network. Learners gain experience performing scans on a local network to find live machines and locate open network ports and services, then find weaknesses in some of these services and explore ways to mitigate them.
• Firewall configuration with pfSense – instructs learners on how to harden, secure, configure and operate a firewall using pfSense

DoS Attacks and Defenses – helps learners better understand how Denial-of-Service attacks work, how they are deployed and the mechanisms cybersecurity professionals can implement to protect their organizations

• ICS OT application-level DoS attack – challenges learners to find, neutralize and contain an attack aimed at bringing down an Operational Technology (OT) network