Cryptography and PKI for CompTIA Security+

Course Overview
Hey everyone, my name is Christopher Rees, and welcome to my course on Cryptography and PKI for CompTIA Security+. In addition to being a trainer here at Pluralsight, I'm also a former law enforcement officer who specialized in computer crimes, and I have over 20 years of enterprise IT experience. I've also been training students from all over the world since 1998. So in this course, we're going to cover the various concepts associated with PKI, or public key infrastructure, which, when you break it down, is one of the cornerstones of an effective cyber security posture. From authenticate and authorization to securing the transmission of sensitive documents and wireless communications, a solid understanding of PKI is essential. So some of the major topics that we'll cover include the basics of cryptography, including the different encryption algorithms, symmetric and asymmetric, along with the various types of ciphers like block and stream. We'll also talk about cryptographic protocols, and the methods you use to secure wireless communications including WEP, WPA, and WPA2. We'll also cover the various components of a public key infrastructure, or PKI, such as certificate authorities, understanding public and private key cryptography and the various types of certificates, along with their associated use cases. By the end of this course, you will understand the key concepts and the key technologies required to properly asses and manage a company's public key infrastructure, no matter how big or small, or what industry it's in. Before beginning the course, having some exposure to CompTIA A+ and/or Network+ concepts is helpful, but not a requirement. From here, you should feel comfortable diving into advanced security topics with courses on CompTIA's Advanced Security Practitioner, and also Malware Analysis: The Big Picture. So I hope you will join me on this journey to learn securing your company's data and communications with cryptography and PKI for CompTIA Security+, here at Pluralsight.

Comparing and Contrasting Basic Cryptography Concepts
Hey, welcome back to Pluralsight. I'm your instructor, Christopher Rees. And in this course, Cryptography and PKI for CompTIA Security Plus, we'll be covering in this module comparing and contrasting basic cryptography concepts. So if we take a look at this module, there's four main areas. You have cryptographic terms and concepts. We have encryption methods and algorithms, key types and key strengths, and then security flaws and some deprecated algorithms. So as usual, there's a lot more under the hood. Sounds like it's not that much here, but if we really take a look, there's a lot of information to cover. So you can pause this for a moment if you want to take a look and see what we're covering. If not, let's get to why should I really care? What does this mean for me? Well, first off, encryption is everywhere, and it can work either for us or against us. So it's imperative that we understand how it works, what's appropriate to use and when and where, and also to make sure we understand what's not appropriate. So not understanding what's appropriate could also be costly, not just in terms of financially to the company, but to brand, reputation, customer confidence, and investor confidence, your job. So there's a lot of things at stake here if you don't do things properly. And even if you're not tasked directly with some of the things covered in this module, security is everyone's responsibility. So it's very important that each and every one of us understand at a fairly deep level what these things mean, what's appropriate and not appropriate, when we should be using a specific technology or a specific algorithm and when we should not. So let's go ahead and get started.

Deciphering Cryptographic Algorithms
Hey, welcome back to Pluralsight. I'm your instructor, Christopher Rees, and in this module, we'll be covering deciphering cryptographic algorithms. So, if you ever want to sound impressive at a party, just tell someone you just learned about deciphering cryptographic algorithms, (Christopher laughs) and watch how fast the room clears. But seriously. So, we'll cover four main areas. We'll talk about symmetric algorithms. We'll talk about cipher modes. We'll talk about asymmetric algorithms, and then hashing algorithms. But as you come to expect, there's always a little bit more under the hood, so let's go ahead and take a look at what's going to be covered on a deeper level. So if we look at this in a little more detail, we see that we have a number of subtopics in each of these. The ones you'll notice in orange I actually covered in this previous video, so even though they're included in the subdomain, we've talked about them previously, so no need to go over them again. But the ones you see here in black, we'll be covering through this module. So if you need to go ahead and pause for a moment to get an understanding of what it is we're covering, please do so. Otherwise, let's go ahead and get started.

Installing and Configuring Wireless Security Settings
Hey, welcome back to Pluralsight. I'm your instructor, Christopher Rees. And in this module we'll be covering Installing and Configuring Wireless Security Settings. So in this module we have three main areas to cover. We'll be talking about cryptographic protocols, we'll be talking about authentication protocols, and then various methods. So as I'm sure you expect, under the hood we have a few more things to cover. And you can go ahead and pause here for just a moment if you want to take a look at what we're covering in more detail. Otherwise let's go ahead and get started.

Implementing Public Key Infrastructure
Hey welcome back to Pluralsight, I'm your instructor Christopher Reece. And in this module we'll be covering implementing Public Key infrastructure. So in this module we have four main areas, we'll be talking about components, concepts, types of certificates and then certificate formats. So as usual, here's a breakdown of what we'll be covering in more detail. Go ahead and pause for a moment if you need to review this in more depth. Otherwise, let's go ahead and get started.