STUDY GUIDE · GKU 1
Cybersecurity foundations: principles, threats, risk and governance study guide (Cybersecurity)
Security is not a product you install; it is a set of decisions about what has value, what could harm it, and what you will do about the gap. This unit builds that vocabulary and then uses it. It defines the asset, the vulnerability, the threat, the risk and the control, and shows how the confidentiality, integrity and availability triad, the AAA services and non-repudiation turn those words into requirements. It then describes the attackers and their methods — malware families, social engineering, the insider — and the incident-response process that takes an organisation from preparation through detection, containment, eradication, recovery and the lessons afterwards. The last section moves up a level: who governs security, how policy differs from a standard, a procedure and a guideline, how access is granted through DAC, MAC, RBAC and ABAC, what multi-factor authentication really requires, and which control families answer which threat. Every section opens with a quick-revision card and works through classification, ranking and design questions of the kind the exam asks.
Structured by the official ETEC subject standard for this topic: every listed topic and learning outcome, with formulas, figures and worked examples. The full sections are available to members in the app.
SKU 1.1 · Cybersecurity foundations
Foundations and principles of cybersecurity
The working vocabulary — asset, vulnerability, threat, risk, control — and the principles that organise every later decision: the CIA triad, AAA, non-repudiation, defence in depth, and the difference between security and privacy.
Cyber threats, risks and incident response
Who attacks and how — criminal groups, insiders and nation states; the malware families and social-engineering techniques; how likelihood and impact become a ranked risk; and the NIST incident-response phases that turn an alert into containment, recovery and a lesson.
Governance, access control and cybersecurity solutions
Who decides and who runs security, the document hierarchy from policy to guideline, the four access-control models, what multi-factor authentication really means, and the control families — firewall, WAF, IDS/IPS, SIEM, EDR, DLP, NAC, backup, encryption and training — that answer specific threats.
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