The latest new Nanodegree from Udacity's School of Programming gives participants a start in the high growth field of Cybersecurity. Currently Udacity is offering discounts and other financial support so, this seems a good time to work towards enhanced career prospects.

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Nanodegree is the term coined by Udacity for career-related  training programs in which you "learn by doing". While there are structured courses taught by instructors, the emphasis is on hands-on projects and as you progress through a nanodegree program you build a portfolio of projects designed to showcase your skills to potential employers.

The latest career area to be targeted by Udacity is highly in-demand field of cybersecurity. In its announcement of the Introduction to Cybersecurity which starts on August 11th,

Quoting research by Cybersecurity Ventures, Udacity reports: 

Cybersecurity is a critically important area for companies, yet there’s a huge shortage of professionals with the right skills - experts are projecting 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021. 

This is a beginner-level program and its prerequisites are limited to a basic knowledge of network connectivity and OS fundamentals.  After four months graduates of this program are expected to be able to:

• Evaluate specific security techniques used to administer a system that meets industry standards and core controls.
• Explain methods for establishing and maintaining the security of a network, computing environment, and application.
• Apply control techniques to secure networks, operating systems, and applications.

The program comprises four courses, each with a full-blown project. They are

1. Cybersecurity Foundations

Securing a Business Network - Investigate and fix security issues on a Windows 10 client system as a way of demonstrating fundamental cybersecurity knowledge, skills, and abilities.

2. Defending and Securing Systems

Monitoring and Securing Douglas Financials Inc.- Acting as a new analyst, students will analyze Windows and Linux servers and report recommendations on OS hardening, compliance issues, encryption, and network security. Students will also create firewall rules, analyze threat intelligence, and encrypt files and folders for transport to a client.

3. Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Incident Response

Navigating a Cybersecurity Incident - Responding to a cyber incident at a hospital, identify the type of threat actor involved and potential motivation behind the attack. Based on clues provided throughout the scenario, students will conduct scans to discover and test vulnerabilities that could lead to a successful attack, assess risk levels associated with the findings and propose a remediation plan.

4. Governance, Risk and Compliance

Create the SwiftTech GRC Program
SwiftTech is a company in transition - they are accelerating product development while trying to maintain a high standard for flexibility and responsiveness with customers, and doing all this while migrating their infrastructure to the cloud. As a brand new GRC analyst for SwiftTech, you’ll need to understand the business quickly and improve their documentation to help support the organization’s goals.

Nanodegree participants get personalized feedback on projects with a 3 hour average project review turnaround time. Its 2000+ project reviewers have reviewed 1.8 million projects and the average reviewer rating is 4.85 out of 5. In addition over a 1000 technical mentors answer student questions and have an average rating of 4.85 out of 5. Udacity also report a 4.9/5 student satisfaction rating for its Personal Career Coaching service.

Many other Udacity Nanodegrees start on August 11, and then at regular intervals after that. We've covered many of them in previous reports including these four which seem particularly relevant:

Another Nanodegree re-starting at the same time is the Java Web Developer Nanodgree on which I Programmer team member, Nikos Vaggalis is enrolled. He is  documenting his experience in The Insider's Guide to the Java Web Developer Nanodegree.

More Information

Udacity

Introduction to Cybersecurity

Java Web Developer Nanodgree

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New Udacity Web Developer Nanodegrees 

Introduction To Programming Nanodegree

Udacity Launches React Nanodegree 

Professional Credentials For Computer Science Careers

Two New Nanodegree Programs - Java and JavaScript  

The Insider's Guide to the Java Web Developer Nanodegree 

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