Curriculum | 12 Credit Hours
In this hands-on program, you'll begin with a foundational course, then progress through more advanced blue and red team electives. The capstone course (ISE 6250) synthesizes your purple team knowledge and skills, culminating with a Defend-the-Flag challenge. This is the curriculum order for this program.
Required Core Courses | 6 credit hours
ISE 5201: Hacker Tools, Techniques, Exploits, & Incident Handling | SEC504 + GCIH
SANS Course: SEC504: Hacker Tools, Techniques, and Incident Handling
Certification: GIAC Certified Incident Handler Certification (GCIH)
3 Credit Hours
By adopting the viewpoint of a hacker, ISE 5201 provides an in-depth focus into the critical activity of incident handling. Students are taught how to manage intrusions by first looking at the techniques used by attackers to exploit a system. Students learn responses to those techniques, which can be adopted within the framework of the incident handling process to handle attacks in an organized way. The faculty instruction, lab exercises, and exam are coordinated to develop and test a student's ability to utilize the core capabilities required for incident handling.
ISE 6250: Purple Team Tactics & Kill Chain Defenses | SEC599 + GDAT
SANS Course: SEC599: Defeating Advanced Adversaries - Purple Team Tactics & Kill Chain Defenses
Certification: GIAC Defending Advanced Threats (GDAT)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6250 leverages the purple team concept by bringing together red and blue teams for maximum effect. Recognizing that a prevent-only strategy is not sufficient, the course focuses on current attack strategies and how they can be effectively mitigated and detected using a Kill Chain structure. Throughout the course, the purple team principle will be maintained, where attack techniques are first explained in-depth, after which effective security controls are introduced and implemented.
Blue Elective Courses | 3 credit hours
Students select one of the following.
ISE 5401: Intrusion Detection In-Depth | SEC503 + GCIA
SANS Course: SEC503: Network Monitoring and Threat Detection In-Depth
Certification: GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst Certification (GCIA)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 5401 delivers the technical knowledge, insight, and hands-on training you need to defend your network with confidence. You will learn about the underlying theory of TCP/IP and the most used application protocols, such as DNS and HTTP, so that you can intelligently examine network traffic for signs of an intrusion. You will get plenty of practice learning to master different open source tools like tcpdump, Wireshark, Snort, Bro, tshark, and SiLK. Daily hands-on exercises suitable for all experience levels reinforce the course book material so that you can transfer knowledge to execution.
ISE 6215: Advanced Security Essentials | SEC501 + GCED
SANS Course: SEC501: Advanced Security Essentials - Enterprise Defender
Certification: GIAC Certified Enterprise Defender (GCED)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6215 reinforces the theme that prevention is ideal, but detection is a must. Students will learn how to ensure that their organizations constantly improve their security posture to prevent as many attacks as possible. A key focus is on data protection, securing critical information no matter whether it resides on a server, in robust network architectures, or on a portable device.
Despite an organization's best effort at preventing attacks and protecting its critical data, some attacks will still be successful. Therefore students will also learn how to detect attacks in a timely fashion through an in-depth understanding the traffic that flows on networks, scanning for indications of an attack. The course also includes instruction on performing penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, and forensics.
ISE 6230: Securing Windows & PowerShell Automation | SEC505 + GCWN
SANS Course: SEC505: Securing Windows and PowerShell Automation
Certification: GIAC Certified Windows Security Administrator (GCWN)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6230 shows students how to secure servers, workstations and portable devices running Microsoft Windows. Windows is the most frequent target of hackers and advanced malware. While other courses focus on detection or remediation of a compromise after the fact, the aim of this course is to substantially reduce these compromises in the first place. For scalability and automation, this course includes many hands-on labs with Group Policy and PowerShell scripting. No prior scripting experience is required. Learning at least the basics of PowerShell is an essential skill for anyone who manages Windows servers or clients in an enterprise.
ISE 6240: Cybersecurity Engineering: Advanced Threat Detection and Monitoring | SEC511 + GMON
SANS Course: SEC511: Cybersecurity Engineering: Advanced Threat Detection and Monitoring
Certification: GIAC Continuous Monitoring Certification (GMON)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6240 teaches a proactive approach to enterprise security that presumes attackers will penetrate your environment and therefore emphasizes timely incident detection. The Defensible Security Architecture, Network Security Monitoring, Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, and Continuous Security Monitoring taught in this course - aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines described in NIST SP 800-137 for Continuous Monitoring (CM) - are designed to enable you and your organization to analyze threats and detect anomalies that could indicate cybercriminal behavior.
ISE 6255: Defensible Security Architecture & Engineering | SEC530 + GDSA
SANS Course: SEC530: Defensible Security Architecture and Engineering: Implementing Zero Trust for the Hybrid Enterprise
Certification: GIAC Defensible Security Architect Certification (GDSA)
3 Credit Hours
Effective security requires a balance between detection, prevention, and response capabilities. Defensible Security Architecture and Engineering is designed to help you establish and maintain a holistic and layered approach to security. You’ll explore the fundamentals of up-to-date defensible security architecture and how to engineer it, with a heavy focus on leveraging current infrastructure (and investment), including switches, routers, and firewalls. You’ll learn how to reconfigure these devices to significantly improve your organization’s prevention capabilities in the face of today's dynamic threat landscape. The course will also delve into the latest technologies and their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Multiple hands-on labs will reinforce key points in the course and provide actionable skills you will be able to leverage immediately at work.
ISE 6270: Applied Data Science and AI/Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Professionals | SEC595 + GMLE
SANS Course: SEC595: Applied Data Science and AI/Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Professionals
Certification: GIAC Machine Learning Engineer (GMLE)
3 Credit Hours
This course is squarely centered on solving information security problems. This course covers the necessary mathematics theory and fundamentals students absolutely must know to allow them to understand and apply the machine learning tools and techniques effectively. The course progressively introduces and applies various statistic, probabilistic, or mathematic tools (in their applied form), allowing you to leave with the ability to use those tools. The hands-on projects provide a broad base from which you can build your own machine learning solutions. This course teaches how AI tools like ChatGPT really work so that you can intelligently discuss their potential use by organizations and how to build effective solutions to solve real cybersecurity problems using machine learning and AI.
ISE 6445: Cyber Threat Intelligence | FOR578 + GCTI
SANS Course: FOR578: Cyber Threat Intelligence
Certification: GIAC Cyber Threat Intelligence (GCTI)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6445 will equip you, your security team, and your organization in the tactical, operational, and strategic level cyber threat intelligence skills and tradecraft required to better understand the evolving threat landscape and to counter those threats accurately and effectively. This course focuses on structured analysis to establish a solid foundation for any security skillset and to amplify existing skills.
Red Elective Courses | 3 credit hours
Students select one of the following.
ISE 6315: Web App Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking | SEC542 + GWAPT
SANS Course: SEC542: Web App Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking
Certification: GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6315 is a highly technical information security course in offensive strategies where students learn the art of exploiting Web applications so they can find flaws in enterprise Web apps before they are otherwise discovered and exploited. Through detailed, hands-on exercises students learn the four-step process for Web application penetration testing. Students will inject SQL into back-end databases, learning how attackers exfiltrate sensitive data. They then utilize cross-site scripting attacks to dominate a target infrastructure in a unique hands-on laboratory environment. Finally students explore various other Web app vulnerabilities in-depth with tried-and-true techniques for finding them using a structured testing regimen.
ISE 6320: Enterprise Penetration Testing | SEC560 + GPEN
SANS Course: SEC560: Enterprise Penetration Testing
Certification: GIAC Penetration Tester Certification (GPEN)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6320 prepares students to conduct successful penetration testing and ethical hacking projects. The course starts with proper planning, scoping and recon, and then dives deep into scanning, target exploitation, password attacks, and wireless and web apps with detailed hands-on exercises and practical tips for doing the job safely and effectively. Students will participate in an intensive, hands-on Capture the Flag exercise, conducting a penetration test against a sample target organization.
ISE 6325: Mobile Device Security & Ethical Hacking | SEC575 + GMOB
SANS Course: SEC575: iOS and Android Application Security Analysis and Penetration Testing
Certification: GIAC Mobile Device Security Analyst (GMOB)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6325 helps students resolve their organization's struggles with mobile device security by equipping then with the skills needed to design, deploy, operate, and assess a well-managed secure mobile environment. From practical policy development to network architecture design and deployment, and mobile code analysis to penetration testing and ethical hacking, this course teaches students to build the critical skills necessary to support the secure deployment and use of mobile phones and tablets in their organization.
ISE 6360: Advanced Penetration Testing, Exploit Writing, & Ethical Hacking | SEC660 + GXPN
SANS Course: SEC660: Advanced Penetration Testing, Exploit Writing, and Ethical Hacking
Certification: GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester (GXPN)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6360 builds upon ISE 6320 - Enterprise Penetration Testing. This advanced course introduces students to the most prominent and powerful attack vectors, allowing students to perform these attacks in a variety of hands-on scenarios. This course is an elective course in the Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking certificate program, and an elective choice for the master's program in Information Security Engineering.
ISE 6370: Red Team Operations and Adversary Emulation | SEC565 + GRTP
SANS Course: SEC565: Red Team Operations and Adversary Emulation
Certification: GIAC Red Team Professional (GRTP)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6370 develops Red Team operators capable of planning and executing consistent and repeatable engagements that are focused on training and on measuring the effectiveness of the people, processes, and technology used to defend environments. You will learn how to plan and execute end-to-end Red Teaming engagements that leverage adversary emulation, including the skills to organize a Red Team, consume threat intelligence to map against adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), emulate those TTPs, report and analyze the results of the Red Team engagement, and ultimately improve the overall security posture of the organization. As part of the course, you will perform an adversary emulation against a target organization modeled on an enterprise environment, including Active Directory, intelligence-rich emails, file servers, and endpoints running in Windows and Linux. Through this course, you will better understand and be able to show the value that Red Teaming and adversary emulations bring to an organization.
ISE 6630: Cloud Penetration Testing | SEC588 + GCPN
SANS Course: SEC588: Cloud Penetration Testing
Certification: GIAC Cloud Penetration Tester (GCPN)
3 Credit Hours
ISE 6630 dives into the latest in penetration testing techniques focused on the cloud, how to assess cloud environments, as well as other new topics that appear in the cloud like microservices, in-memory data stores, files in the cloud, serverless functions, Kubernetes meshes, and containers. The course also specifically covers Azure and AWS penetration testing, which is particularly important given that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft account for more than half of the market. The goal is not to demonstrate these technologies, but rather to teach you how to assess and report on the true risk that the organization could face if these services are left insecure.
Students will be able to:
- Conduct cloud-based penetration tests
- Assess cloud environments and bring value back to the business by locating vulnerabilities
- Understand how cloud environments are constructed and how to scale factors into the gathering of evidence
- Assess security risks in Amazon and Microsoft Azure environments
