Introduction to applied cryptography. Cryptographic methods that form the basis of cybersecurity.
Suggested by: Coursera (What is Coursera?)
No prior knowledge required
No unnecessary risks
Cryptography is a vital part of cybersecurity. The need to protect sensitive information and maintain the integrity of industrial control processes has made cybersecurity skills in high demand in today’s information technology market.
As part of this internship, students will learn about:
These topics will be useful both for those taking their first steps in the field of cyberspace and for those with some experience.
Each course includes a project for students. The projects are designed to help students objectively evaluate various cryptographic methods and how they can be applied in the cyber domain.
Course 1 • 12 hours • 4.5 (404 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
Welcome to the “Introduction to Applied Cryptography” course. Cryptography is a vital component of the cyber world. The need to protect sensitive information and ensure the integrity of industrial processes has led to a high demand for cyber skills in today’s information technology market. According to Symantec, the world’s largest provider of security software, the demand for cyber jobs is expected to increase by 6 million worldwide by 2019, with an expected shortage of 1.5 million jobs. According to Forbes, the cyber market is expected to grow from $75 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020. In this course, you will learn about basic security issues in computer communications, classical cryptographic algorithms, symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, authentication, and digital signatures. These topics will be especially helpful if you are new to the field of cybersecurity. Course 1, “Classical Cryptographic Systems,” introduces basic concepts and terms related to cryptography and cryptanalysis. It is recommended that you have a basic knowledge of computer science and basic math skills such as algebra and probability.
Course 2 • 14 hours • 4.6 (321 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
Welcome to Course 2 of “Introduction to Applied Cryptography.” In this course, you will learn basic mathematical principles and functions that form the basis of cryptography and cryptanalysis methods. These principles and functions will help you understand the symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic methods that will be discussed in Courses 3 and 4. These topics will be especially helpful if you are new to the field of cyber. It is recommended that you have a basic knowledge of computer science and basic math skills such as algebra and probability.
Course 3 • 12 hours • 4.5 (256 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
Welcome to the Symmetric Cryptography course! Symmetric cryptography relies on a shared secret key to ensure the confidentiality of a message, so that unauthorized attackers cannot reconstruct the message. The course describes substitution and transformation techniques, which were the basis of classical cryptography when the message is encoded in a natural language such as English. Next, we will build on product ciphers (using both substitution and array/permutation) to describe modern block ciphers and review the common cipher algorithms in DES, 3-DES, and AES. Finally, we will enable the use of block ciphers to support variable data lengths by introducing different modes of operation for block ciphers in ECB, CBC, CFB, OFB, and CTR modes.
This course is part of two specializations – specialization in applied cryptography and specialization in introduction to applied cryptography.
Course 4 • 8 hours • 4.6 (254 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
Welcome to the “Asymmetric Cryptography and Key Management” course! In asymmetric cryptography, or public-key cryptography, the sender and receiver use a public-private key pair, as opposed to a single symmetric key, and therefore their cryptographic operations are asymmetric. This course will review the principles of asymmetric cryptography and describe how the use of the key pair can provide various security features. Next, we will study the popular asymmetric schemes in the RSA algorithm and the Day-Hellman key exchange protocol, and understand how and why they work to secure communications/access. Finally, we will discuss key distribution and management for symmetric and public keys, and describe important concepts in public key distribution such as public key institutions, digital certificates, and public key infrastructure. This course also describes some mathematical concepts such as prime factorization and discrete logarithms, which serve as the basis for securing asymmetric primitives, and a practical understanding of discrete mathematics will be useful in this course; the course on symmetric cryptography (recommended to be taken before this course) also deals with modular arithmetic.
This course is part of two specializations – specialization in applied cryptography and specialization in introduction to applied cryptography.
