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STUDY GUIDE · GKU 3

Cybersecurity principles: attacks, risk, detection and cryptography study guide (Information Technology)

An IT team defends systems it did not design against attackers it cannot see, with a budget that never covers everything. That job has two halves. The first is about risk: knowing how attacks work and which weaknesses they use, separating vulnerabilities from threats from risk, reading what detection systems report, and spending on the controls that remove the most risk per riyal on networks, cloud services, desktops and phones. The second is the toolbox that protects data itself: symmetric and public-key encryption, hashes, message authentication codes and signatures, authentication of people and machines, and encryption of stored data at the block, file and application level. Attacks are described here at the level of a textbook, to recognise and stop them; cryptographic examples use small numbers so that every step can be checked by hand.

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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 3.1 · Cyber attacks, vulnerabilities, threats, risk and detection

  1. Types of cyber attacks and vulnerabilities

    The main attack families — malware, social engineering, denial of service, injection and other web attacks, interception, credential attacks — the vulnerabilities each one uses, and the evidence by which each is detected.

  2. Vulnerabilities, threats, risk and impact across computing environments

    The precise difference between a vulnerability, a threat, a risk and an impact, how they combine into a risk score, and the typical weaknesses and threats of networks, cloud services, desktops and mobile devices.

  3. Detecting and mitigating attacks

    The detection toolbox — IDS and IPS (signature and anomaly), SIEM correlation, endpoint detection and response, network traffic analysis, vulnerability scanners — how to read alert numbers when attacks are rare, how to analyse logs, and how to turn findings into mitigation.

  4. Risk management and prevention across systems, networks and devices

    Applying a risk management framework (NIST SP 800-30 and the RMF, ISO/IEC 27005, NIST CSF 2.0), the tools that identify vulnerabilities and threats, quantitative loss expectancy and control value, the four treatments, and the preventive controls for systems, networks and devices.

SKU 3.2 · Cryptography overview

  1. Cryptographic algorithms: symmetric, public-key, hashes and signatures

    The four families of cryptographic primitive, what each guarantees, their strengths, weaknesses and uses, worked by hand with toy Diffie–Hellman and RSA numbers, and how real systems combine them.

  2. Authentication and data security

    How people and machines prove who they are — factors, multi-factor authentication, password storage, challenge–response and certificates — how password strength is measured, and how authentication, access control and encryption together protect data.

  3. Privacy and encrypted storage: block-, file- and application-level encryption

    Where in the storage stack data can be encrypted, what each level protects against and what it does not, who holds the keys, and how encryption serves privacy alongside minimisation, pseudonymisation and the PDPL.

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