CS50's Introduction to Cybersecurity
Learn how to protect your own data, devices, and systems from today's threats.
An introduction to cybersecurity for technical and non-technical audiences alike in an online course from Harvard.
2-6 hours a week
What You'll Learn
This is CS50's introduction to cybersecurity for technical and non-technical audiences alike. Learn how to protect your own data, devices, and systems from today's threats and how to recognize and evaluate tomorrow's as well, both at home and at work. Learn to view cybersecurity not in absolute terms but relative, a function of risks and rewards (for an adversary) and costs and benefits (for you). Learn to recognize cybersecurity as a trade-off with usability itself. Course presents both high-level and low-level examples of threats, providing students with all they need know technically to understand both. Assignments inspired by real-world events.
The course will be delivered via edX and connect learners around the world. By the end of the course, participants will learn:
- hacking, cracking
- social engineering, phishing attacks
- passcodes, passwords, SSO
- brute-force attacks, dictionary attacks
- biometrics
- multi-factor authentication, password managers
- ethical hacking
- (distributed) denial-of-service attacks
- viruses, worms, botnets
- SQL injection attacks
- port-scanning
- proxies, firewalls
- automatic updates
- closed-source, open-source software
- buffer-overflow attacks
- secure deletion
- hashing, salting
- secret-key, public-key encryption, digital signatures
- full-disk encryption, ransomware
- cookies, sessions, incognito mode
- anonymization, de-identification
- verification
- operating systems, app stores
Your Instructors
David J. Malan is Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as well as a Member of the Faculty of Education in the Graduate School of Education. He teaches Computer Science 50, otherwise known as CS50, which is among Harvard University's largest courses, one of Yale University's largest courses, and edX's largest MOOC. He also teaches at Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Extension School, and Harvard Summer School.
Ways to take this course
When you enroll in this course, you will have the option of pursuing a Verified Certificate or Auditing the Course.
A Verified Certificate costs $449 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate.
Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums. Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.