For the Masters program that I am enrolled in, students are required to take five electives focused around cybersecurity before graduation. One of the courses that I was most interested in taking was the Advanced Ethical Hacking/Penetration Testing course. This particular course caught my attention because it is my dream to one day secure a position as a penetration tester for a company, therefore it is important for me to learn the fundamental procedures, and tools used during penetration testing. 

This course teaches students the underlying principles and many of the techniques associated with the cybersecurity practice known as penetration testing or ethical hacking. The course covers planning, reconnaissance, scanning, exploitation, post-exploitation, and result reporting. Students will discover how system vulnerabilities can be exploited and learns to avoid such problems.

By the end of this course, students will be able to;

• Recognize the realm of network security.

• State and relate the basic terminology and concepts in network security.

• Explain why people attack computers and networks.

• Define the roles, responsibilities and common challenges of security personnel to successfully combat hackers.

• Explain what a denial-of-service (DoS) attack is

•  Describe the causes of DoS attacks 

• Describe the evolution of programming exploits