Udacity is excited to introduce the newest addition to our School of Cybersecurity: the Security Architect Nanodegree program. This new Nanodegree program is designed with the cybersecurity professional in mind and is aimed at helping them advance their careers.
As more and more companies enhance their information technology and cloud infrastructure, keeping data safe is quickly becoming a top priority. Job growth in the cybersecurity field is good evidence of that. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in information security (including security architects) are growing at a rate of 33%.
What is a Security Architect?
Security architects are people who design and implement large-scale security architecture and services. Their jobs involve understanding systems as a whole — from a security standpoint. They learn who has access to what information, look for weak points and security risks, then recommend solutions to make the systems more robust.
Additionally, security architects are usually charged with defining security policies and protocols, as well as monitoring and enforcing them within the organization. In order to do this, they must gain an understanding of the business as a whole.
Program Details
The Security Architect Nanodegree program will teach you core strategy, design and implementation of security infrastructure and management at an enterprise level. At the end of this program, you will have all the skills you need to work successfully as a Security Architect, with skills in identity and access management (IAM), infrastructure security, threat detection and incident response.
To get the most out of this course, it’s important to have experience in the security field or have taken courses in cybersecurity. Specifically, students should be able to:
- Configure and manage Linux servers and cloud environments
- Have experience with networking, cloud, and Linux systems in general
- Know common networking protocols, like HTTP, TCP, DNS, SSH
- Understand client-server architecture
- Identify encryption protocols, including AES, RSA, PGP
- Write code in Python
- Know general cybersecurity terminology
In as little as four months (at 5-10 hours a week), students who enroll in the Security Architect Nanodegree program will learn how to evaluate business risks, design security architecture, develop IAM models in an organization, integrate network defense for security alerts and detection, and form an incident response plan for cyber attacks.
Specific projects include:
Project 1: Conduct an Application Security Review
Assess the technical security of a customer information management system (CIMS) for security vulnerabilities and write up findings in a report.
Project 2: Architecting IAM Implementation with Enforcement
Design and implement a role structure with policies for an organization. Create an access control matrix that defines roles, resources, and actions, then form the role structure within AWS. After implementation, use AWS Config to evaluate the IAM policies against organizational requirements.
Project 3: Watertight Security
Analyze an application for the Water & Power Organization (WPO) that is experiencing malware attacks. Identify weak points in the system and come up with a plan to improve the overall security of the service, as well as mitigate risks.
Project 4: Incident Response and Business Continuity for Micro-Assurances
Create and execute a cloud incident response runbook for a compromised database administrator account based on the Architecture Diagram of a small business.
Learning from Top Security Specialists
To develop this program’s world-class curriculum, we collaborated with professionals from top-rated tech companies. Each of these collaborators contributed guidance and feedback to focus the program on the most in-demand skills. Each of the instructors has extensive cybersecurity and teaching experience.
Instructors
Erick Galinkin, Principle AI Researcher at Rapid7
Sjon-Paul Brown, Senior DevOps Engineer
Abhinav Singh, Cybersecurity Researcher and Author
William O. Ferguson, Cloud Architect
Enroll in the Security Architect Nanodegree Program Today
If you’re someone with experience in cybersecurity — either from work, school, or online courses — and want to advance your career, this is the Nanodegree program for you.
Security architects are paid very well for their work. According to ZipRecruiter, the average annual salary of a security architect is over $153,000. If you’re looking for a high-paying career, working in cybersecurity is a great one to consider.
With Udacity’s hands-on project-centric learning, there’s no better way to meet the demand than by registering today for the Security Architect Nanodegree program. Enroll now to learn more!
