Marquel Waites is a Cyber Analyst and Military Veteran with 21 years of experience in the United States Army. He is skilled in system troubleshooting, logistics/resourcing, data analysis, cyber operations, vulnerability management, process improvement, change management, risk analysis/mitigation, security assessment, and security analytics. He also has a working knowledge of tools and technologies like SQL Server 2017, Ubuntu Server, Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016, Microsoft Security Center Configuration Manager, and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016.
He has recently reviewed our ISC2 CCSP course and provided his valuable feedback. Please read it here:
“The uCertify CCSP Certification course provides chapters, lessons, and exercises. The lab exercises are important to get involved in as the labs will enhance your learning experience.
I really liked the flashcards and quizzes that are added at the end of the chapters. They will help you understand the CCSP exam objectives in a better way.”
Recently, the term “cyber threat” has become more relevant because of the danger it poses to most industries, however, most people don’t know much about cyber threats at all. Let’s go a bit further into the background of cybersecurity and cyber attacks.
What is a cyber threat?
A cyber threat is an act intended to steal data or cause some sort of digital harm. The term is exclusively used to describe information security matters nowadays.
A cyber attack is set up against digital devices using cyberspace. Cyberspace is a virtual space that is becoming a metaphor to help us understand the digital weaponry that intends to harm us. The intent of the attacker, as well as the potential impact, depends upon the severity of the attack. These attacks can be quite serious, potentially threatening lives.
What is the need to protect from cyber threats?
Cyber threats are a very serious issue these days. They can cause electrical blackouts, breaches of national security secrets, theft of valuable, sensitive data like medical records. They can damage phone and computer networks or paralyze systems to steal the data. These threats are getting more serious. The definition of cybersecurity states that cybersecurity risks are present in every organization and aren’t always under IT’s direct control. Organizational leaders are making technology-related choices every day. So we can say that the data security solutions are also increasing with the increased cyber risk.
Types of cybersecurity threats
Cybersecurity threats are mainly divided into three broad categories based on the gain that can be achieved by the attackers:
Financial gain
Disruption
Underground activities (including the theft of patents or state espionage)
Virtually every cyber threat falls into one of these three modes.
6 common cyber threats
Malware: Software that performs a malicious task on a target device or network comes under the category of malware. Some typical examples are corrupting data or taking over a system.
Phishing: This type of attack involves tricking the email recipient into disclosing confidential information or downloading malware by clicking on a hyperlink in the message.
Data Breaches: A data breach is a theft of data by a malicious actor. Motives for data breaches include crime, defamation, and espionage.
Trojans: Trojan is a type of malware that enters a target system looking like one of them.
Ransomware: This involves encrypting data on the target system and demanding ransom in exchange for letting users have access to the data again. A recent example of this is locking down the entire city of Atlanta’s municipal government data in 2018.
Denial of Service attack or Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS): Where an attacker takes over many(perhaps thousands) of devices and uses them to invoke the functions of a target system.
Now, let’s discuss the safety measures that an organization or individual should take.
As shown in previous paragraphs, cyber threats are one of the greatest dangers to any organization or business. Organizations are taking serious actions to make themselves safe and secure. One step they are taking is hiring highly skilled cybersecurity professionals as shown by recent surveys.
So, if you want to start your career in this field, you should really consider adding a cybersecurity certification to your resume. There are various cybersecurity certs available in the market, including CISSP, CySA+, CCSP, and more.
uCertify offers various comprehensive courses to help you prepare for these certification exams. We are a leading provider of online courses and ensure the best learning resources for IT certification prep.
In this article, we will discuss the top IT certifications that you can add to your resume this year. The list goes from cloud computing, cybersecurity, and networking to project management. Cloud, Machine Learning, AI, and project management were among the top five most desired certifications last year. These certifications will continue to dominate in 2020 as well. Approximately 80% of IT professionals say that certifications are useful for their careers. The tricky part is deciding which area to focus on. This article will help you choose the right certification for you. Let’s have a look at the most demanded and highly paid IT certifications along with the average salary earned by these certs. We will discuss a few of them here.
Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect (GCPA): USD 139,529
Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect (GCPA)
This certification helps you gain an understanding of cloud architecture and Google Cloud Platform(GCP) so that you can design, develop, and manage robust, secure, scalable, highly available, and dynamic solutions to stimulate business applications. The certification assesses a candidate’s ability to analyzing and optimizing technology and business processes; managing and implementing cloud architecture and ensuring solution and operations reliability.
Project Management Professional (PMP)
This PMI PMP certification demonstrates that the certified professional possesses the project management knowledge, experience, and skills to bring projects to successful completion. As the demand for skilled project managers increases practitioners who hold the PMP certification are well-positioned to provide the professional skills necessary to lead project teams and achieve successful project results.
Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
This certification will help you learn the Scrum framework and gain an understanding of team roles, events, and artifacts. The certification will help you:
Expand your career opportunities by adopting Agile practices
Demonstrate your attainment of core Scrum knowledge
Learn the foundation of Scrum and the scope of the role
Engage with Agile practitioners committed to continuous improvement
AWS Certified Solutions Architect/Associate
This certification is designed for individuals who perform a solutions architect role and have one or more years of hands-on experience in designing available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS.
AWS Certified Developer/Associate
This certification is for individuals who perform roles in development and have one or more years of hands-on experience developing and maintaining an AWS-based application. This also demonstrates an understanding of core AWS services, uses, and basic AWS architecture best practices.
So, are you excited about earning these IT certifications and adding value to your career? Start your prep today with uCertify – an award-winning, e-learning platform that offers comprehensive courses that will help you prepare for these cert exams with its learning resources.
Over the past several years, the cloud computing field has generated more hype, interest, and investment than any other IT field. There is no doubt that the cloud is now a permanent fixture for end-users and service providers, as well as global companies and organizations of all sizes. This is the reason that cloud computing attracts considerable coverage and attention from certification providers and companies that offer cloud-related products, such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and VMware. There is a high demand for Cloud professionals in all types of organizations. You can get a good job and salary if have proven your skills, experience, and knowledge. If you are planning to explore a career in Cloud computing, there are some top Cloud certifications you can consider. Cloud certified professionals earn more than non-certified ones. Reports prove that average salaries for Cloud Administrators at just under USD 75,000, while Cloud Developers average nearly USD 118,000 annually. In this article, we will brief you on some important Cloud credentials that will help you enhance your opportunities in the marketplace this year.
The AWS CLF-C01 exam validates the candidate’s ability to define the billing, account management, and pricing models; and describe basic security and compliance aspects of the AWS platform and the shared security model.
The CCNA Cloud certification program that helps Cloud Engineers, Cloud Administrators, and Network Engineers to develop, advance, and validate their cloud skill set and enables them to help their IT organization meet changing business demands from technology transitions.
The CCNP Cloud credential is designed to validate the skills of administrators, designers, and data center professionals working in a cloud-based environment. The CCNP cloud certified candidates have the skills necessary to design and implement network, storage and cloud infrastructure solutions and security policies, and more.
The MCSE: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure certification validates a candidate’s knowledge and skills in data center management, networking, virtualization, systems and identity management; storage, and related cloud technologies.
5. VCP7-CMA: VMware Certified Professional 7 – Cloud Management and Automation
VCP7-CMA certification validates your ability to install, configure, and administer a VMware vRealize environment, used to automate key processes within your Data Center.
These were just the top 5 cloud certs, but there are more like CompTIA Cloud Essentials, ISC2 CCSP, and others. All you have to do is just explore the web and choose the best-suited certification. We offer a course and comprehensive lab for the preparation of the certification exams. You can use our courses for passing the certification exams.
Mark Richard Mosquedais currently working as a Senior Network Security Engineer at Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. and has more than 4 years of experience in the field of network security. His field of expertise includes firewalls, WAN, network design, routing, troubleshooting, TCP/IP, and more. Mark holds various IT certifications including:
Cisco CCNA CyberOps
Licensed Electronics Engineer
Accredited Configuration Engineer (ACE) Exam
Cisco Certified Network Associate – Routing and Switching
Cisco Certified Network Professional – Routing and Switching
ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management (ITILF)
He has recently reviewed our ISC2 CISSP course and provided his valuable feedback. Please read it here:
“The uCertify CISSP course is one of the best courses I ever had. I loved how they manage to perform a pre-assessment test for learners to quickly gauge which domain they need to work on or to focus on. The User-Interface between the user and the site is astonishing and very easy to use.
The content is very straight-forward and easy to understand as there are subtitles and scripts as well. Overall, I would recommend this course to those who wanted to look for CISSP materials not only for exam takers but for actual application on the job.”