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Course Description
Official (ISC)²® Training Seminar for the Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP®) provides a comprehensive review of the knowledge required to implement, monitor and administer IT infrastructure in accordance with information security policies and procedures that ensure data confidentiality, integrity and availability. This training course will help students review and refresh their knowledge and identify areas they need to study for the SSCP exam. Content aligns with and comprehensively covers the seven domains of the (ISC)² SSCP Common Body of Knowledge (CBK®).
Official courseware is developed by (ISC)² – creator of the SSCP CBK – to ensure your training is relevant and up-to-date. Our instructors are verified security experts who hold the SSCP and have completed intensive training to teach (ISC)² content.
Who Should Earn the SSCP?
The SSCP is ideal for IT administrators, managers, directors and network security professionals responsible for the hands-on operational security of their organization’s critical assets, including those in the following positions:
- Network Security Engineer
- System Administrator
- Security Analyst
- Systems Engineer
- Security Consultant/specialist
- Security Administrator
- System/Network Analyst
- Database Administrator
Prerequisites
Candidates must have a minimum of one year cumulative work experience in one or more of the seven domains of the SSCP CBK. A one year prerequisite pathway will be granted for candidates who received a degree (bachelors or masters) in a cybersecurity program. A candidate that doesn’t have the required experience to become an SSCP may become an Associate of (ISC)² by successfully passing the SSCP examination. The Associate of (ISC)² will then have two years to earn the one year required experience.
1.1 Comply with codes of ethics
- (ISC)² Code of Ethics
- Organizational code of ethics
1.2 Understand security concepts
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Availability
- Accountability
- Privacy
- Non-repudiation
- Least privilege
- Segregation of duties (SoD)
1.3 Identify and implement security controls
- Technical controls (e.j., session timeout, password aging)
- Physical controls (e.g., mantraps, cameras, locks)
- Administrative controls (e.g., security policies, standards, procedures, baselines)
- Assessing compliance
- Periodic audit and review
1.4 Document and maintain functional security controls
- Deterrent controls
- Preventative controls
- Detective controls
- Corrective controls
- Compensating controls
1.5 Participate in asset management lifecycle (hardware, software and data)
- Process, planning, design and initiation
- Development/Acquisition
- Inventory and licensing
- Implementation/Assessment
- Operation/Maintenance
- Archiving and retention requirements
- Disposal and destruction
1.6 Participate in change management lifecycle
- Change management (e.g., roles, responsibilities, processes)
- Security impact analysis
- Configuration management (CM)
1.7 Participate in implementing security awareness and training (e.g., social engineering/phishing)
1.8 Collaborate with physical security operations (e.g., data center assessment, badging)
Domain 2:
Access Controls
2.1 Implement and maintain authentication methods
- Single/Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Single sign-on (SSO) (e.g., Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), OpenID Connect)
- Device authentication
- Federated access (e.g., Open Authorization 2 (OAuth2), Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML))
2.2 Support internetwork trust architectures
- Trust relationships (e.g., 1-way, 2-way, transitive, zero)
- Internet, intranet and extranet
- Third-party connections
2.3 Participate in the identity management lifecycle
- Authorization
- Proofing
- Provisioning/De-provisioning
- Maintenance
- Entitlement
- Identity and access management (IAM) systems
2.4 Understand and apply access controls
- Mandatory
- Discretionary
- Role-based (e.g., attribute-, subject-, object-based)
- Rule-based
3.1 Understand the risk management process
- Risk visibility and reporting (e.g., risk register, sharing threat intelligence/Indicators of Compromise (IOC), Common Vulnerability Scoring (CVSS))
- Risk management concepts (e.g., impact assessments, threat modelling)
- Risk management frameworks
- Risk tolerance (e.g., appetite)
- Risk treatment (e.g., accept, transfer, mitigate, avoid)
3.2 Understand legal and regulatory concerns (e.g., jurisdiction, limitations, privacy)
3.3 Participate in security assessment and vulnerability management activities
- Security testing
- Risk review (e.g., internal, supplier, architecture)
- Vulnerability management lifecycle
3.4 Operate and monitor security platforms (e.g., continuous monitoring)
- Source systems (e.g., applications, security appliances, network devices, and hosts)
- Events of interest (e.g., anomalies, intrusions, unauthorized changes, compliance monitoring)
- Log management
- Event aggregation and correlation
3.5 Analyze monitoring results
- Security baselines and anomalies
- Visualizations, metrics, and trends (e.g., notifications, dashboards, timelines)
- Event data analysis
- Document and communicate findings (e.g., escalation)
4.1 Support incident lifecycle lifecycle e.g., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), International Organization for Standardization (ISO))
- Preparation
- Detection, analysis and escalation
- Containment
- Eradication
- Recovery
- Lessons learned/implementation of new countermeasure
4.2 Understand and support forensic investigations
- Legal (e.g., civil, criminal, administrative) and ethical principles
- Evidence handling (e.g., first responder, triage, chain of custody, preservation of scene)
- Reporting of analysis
4.3 Understand and support business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP)
- Emergency response plans and procedures (e.g., information system contingency, pandemic, natural disaster, crisis management)
- Interim or alternate processing strategies
- Restoration planning
- Backup and redundancy implementation
- Testing and drills
Domain 5:
Cryptography
5.1 Understand cryptography
- Confidentiality
- Integrity and authenticity
- Data sensitivity (e.g., personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property (IP), protected health information (PHI))
- Regulatory and industry best practice (e.g., Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS), International Organization for Standardization (ISO))
5.2 Apply cryptography concepts
- Hashing
- Salting
- Symmetric/Asymmetric encryption/Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)
- Non-repudiation (e.g., digital signatures/certificates, Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC), audit trails)
- Strength of encryption algorithms and keys (e.g., Advanced Encryption Standards (AES), Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), 256-, 512-, 1024-, 2048-bit keys)
- Cryptographic attacks, cryptanalysis, and countermeasures (e.g., quantum computing)
5.3 Understand and implement secure protocols
- Services and protocols
- Common use cases
- Limitations and vulnerabilities
5.4 Understand public key infrastructure (PKI)
- Fundamental key management concepts (e.g., storage, rotation, composition, generation, destruction, exchange, revocation, escrow)
- Web of Trust (WOT)
6.1 Understand and apply fundamental concepts of networking
- Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) models
- Network topologies
- Network relationships (e.g., peer-to-peer (P2P), client server)
- Transmission media types (e.g., wired, wireless)
- Software-defined networking (SDN) (e.g., Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), network virtualization, automation)
- Commonly used ports and protocols
6.2 Understand network attacks (e.g., distributed denial of service (DDoS), man-in-the-middle (MITM), Domain Name System (DNS) poisoning) and countermeasures (e.g., content delivery networks (CDN))
6.3 Manage network access controls
- Network access controls, standards and protocols (e.g., Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.1X, Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS), Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System Plus (TACACS+))
- Remote access operation and configuration (e.g., thin client, virtual private network (VPN))
6.4 Manage network security
- Logical and physical placement of network devices (e.g., inline, passive, virtual)
- Segmentation (e.g., physical/logical, data/control plane, virtual local area network (VLAN), access control list (ACL), firewall zones, micro-segmentation)
- Secure device management
6.5 Operate and configure network-based security devices
- Firewalls and proxies (e.g., filtering methods, web application firewalls (WAF)) Intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS)
- Network intrusion detection/prevention systems
- Routers and switches
- Traffic-shaping devices (e.g., wide area network (WAN) optimization, load balancing)
6.6 Secure wireless communications
- Technologies (e.g., cellular network, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Near-Field Communication (NFC))
- Authentication and encryption protocols (e.g., Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP))
- Internet of Things (IoT)
7.1 Identify and analyze malicious code and activity
- Malware (e.g., rootkits, spyware, scareware, ransomware, trojans, virus, worms, trapdoors, backdoors, fileless)
- Malware countermeasures (e.g., scanners, anti-malware, code signing)
- Malicious activity (e.g., insider threat, data theft, distributed denial of service (DDoS), botnet, zero-day exploits, web-based attacks, advanced persistent threat (APT))
- Malicious activity countermeasures (e.g., user awareness, system hardening, patching, sandboxing, isolation, data loss prevention (DLP))
7.2 Implement and operate endpoint device security
- Host-based intrusion prevention system (HIPS)
- Host-based firewalls
- Application white listing
- Endpoint encryption (e.g., whole disk encryption)
- Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
- Secure browsing
- Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
7.3 Administer Mobile Device Management (MDM)
- Provisioning techniques (e.g., corporate owned, personally enabled (COPE), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD))
- Containerization
- Encryption
- Mobile application management (MAM)
7.4 Understand and configure cloud security
- Deployment models (e.g., public, private, hybrid, community)
- Service models (e.g., Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS))
- Virtualization (e.g., hypervisor)
- Legal and regulatory concerns (e.g., privacy, surveillance, data ownership, jurisdiction, eDiscovery)
- Data storage, processing, and transmission (e.g., archiving, recovery, resilience)
- Third-party/outsourcing requirements (e.g., service-level agreement (SLA), data portability, data destruction, auditing)
- Shared responsibility model
7.5 Operate and maintain secure virtual environments
- Hypervisor
- Virtual appliances
- Containers
- Continuity and resilience
- Attacks and countermeasures
- Shared storage