CompTIA Security+ Certification Prep Course

Lesson 1 • Security Roles and Responsibilities

Maps organisational roles to security duties, from end users to CISOs. Clarifies accountability structures students will encounter in job environments.

Lesson 2 • Core Security Concepts and Terminology

Defines confidentiality, integrity, availability, and related principles. Provides the conceptual framework that underpins every subsequent topic in the course.

Lesson 3 • Types of Security Controls

Categorises controls as preventive, detective, corrective, and compensating. Connects control types to real-world defence-in-depth strategies.

Lesson 1 • Social Engineering Techniques

Examines phishing, vishing, smishing, pretexting, and tailgating. Connects human-factor attacks to security awareness programme design.

Lesson 2 • Application and Network Attack Vectors

Covers injection attacks, XSS, buffer overflows, DoS, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Links attack mechanics to the vulnerability classes they exploit.

Lesson 3 • Malware Categories and Behaviours

Distinguishes viruses, worms, ransomware, trojans, and spyware by behaviour. Builds threat recognition skills essential for incident response and exam questions.

Lesson 4 • Threat Intelligence and Indicators

Defines IOCs, threat feeds, and the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Prepares students to apply intelligence-driven defence in later operational chapters.

Lesson 1 • Secure Network Protocols

Contrasts secure and insecure protocol pairs such as HTTPS vs. HTTP and SSH vs. Telnet. Reinforces why protocol selection directly affects confidentiality and integrity.

Lesson 2 • Intrusion Detection and Prevention

Differentiates IDS and IPS deployment modes and signature vs. anomaly detection. Positions these tools within the broader network monitoring strategy.

Lesson 3 • Firewall Types and Deployment

Compares packet-filtering, stateful, NGFW, and WAF technologies. Guides students in selecting and positioning firewalls within a layered architecture.

Lesson 4 • VPNs and Remote Access Security

Covers IPsec, SSL/TLS VPNs, split tunneling, and always-on VPN models. Addresses secure remote access as a critical control in distributed work environments.

Lesson 1 • Certificate Lifecycle Management

Covers certificate issuance, renewal, revocation via CRL and OCSP, and pinning. Ensures students can maintain a healthy certificate environment over time.

Lesson 2 • Symmetric and Asymmetric Algorithms

Analyses AES, 3DES, RSA, ECC, and Diffie-Hellman in terms of strength and use case. Builds on Chapter 1 basics to enable algorithm selection decisions.

Lesson 3 • Cryptographic Protocols and Use Cases

Maps TLS handshake, S/MIME, PGP, and disk encryption to specific protection goals. Reinforces protocol selection as a practical cryptographic decision.

Lesson 4 • Public Key Infrastructure Design

Explains CA hierarchies, root CAs, intermediate CAs, and trust chains. Provides the structural knowledge needed to deploy and manage enterprise PKI.

Lesson 1 • Directory Services and Federation

Explains LDAP, Active Directory, SAML, OAuth, and OpenID Connect. Prepares students to configure federated identity for cloud and hybrid environments.

Lesson 2 • Authentication Factors and Methods

Defines something you know, have, and are, plus location and behaviour factors. Establishes the authentication taxonomy used throughout IAM design decisions.

Lesson 3 • Privileged Access Management

Addresses PAM solutions, just-in-time access, and credential vaulting. Reduces insider threat risk by controlling and auditing elevated account usage.

Lesson 4 • Multi-Factor Authentication Implementation

Examines TOTP, HOTP, push notifications, and hardware keys for MFA. Connects MFA deployment to reducing credential-based attack success rates.

Lesson 1 • Security Policies and Governance

Covers policy hierarchy, acceptable use, data classification, and third-party risk. Establishes governance structures that enforce security requirements organisation-wide.

Lesson 2 • Regulatory and Compliance Frameworks

Surveys major data protection, payment security, and healthcare privacy frameworks. Helps students map security controls to compliance obligations without jurisdiction-specific detail.

Lesson 3 • Risk Response and Treatment

Defines risk avoidance, mitigation, transference, and acceptance strategies. Connects treatment decisions to residual risk and control cost-benefit analysis.

Lesson 4 • Risk Assessment Methodologies

Covers qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, asset valuation, and risk registers. Provides the analytical tools needed to prioritise security investments.

Lesson 1 • Endpoint Detection and Response

Examines EDR agents, behavioural detection, threat hunting, and containment actions. Positions endpoint visibility as a complement to network-level monitoring.

Lesson 2 • Log Management and Analysis

Explains syslog, Windows Event logs, log aggregation, and retention policies. Establishes logging as the evidentiary foundation for all detection and response activities.

Lesson 3 • Security Automation and Orchestration

Introduces SOAR platforms, playbook automation, and API-driven security workflows. Prepares students to reduce mean time to respond through automated actions.

Lesson 4 • SIEM Platforms and Use Cases

Covers SIEM ingestion, correlation rules, dashboards, and alert triage. Connects SIEM capabilities to the detection and response workflow in a SOC.

Lesson 1 • Incident Response Lifecycle

Maps preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned. Provides the procedural backbone for all incident handling activities.

Lesson 2 • Digital Forensics Fundamentals

Covers evidence acquisition, chain of custody, write blockers, and forensic imaging. Ensures legally defensible evidence handling for investigations and litigation support.

Lesson 3 • Disaster Recovery Planning

Covers backup strategies, replication, failover sites, and DR testing methods. Aligns recovery capabilities with RTO and RPO targets established in the BIA.

Lesson 4 • Communication and Reporting

Addresses internal escalation, regulatory notification timelines, and executive reporting. Ensures students can communicate incident status clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.