Observations of Instructor Led Training with Real Hardware

TechNow has heard many students talk about virtualized/remote training that TechNow Does Not Do.  While training our most recent offering of PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack a student told his story of how he endend up in our course.  His story we have heard for other technologies like Cisco, VMware, BlueCoat and other products.

A large percentage of training is moving to the virtualized/remote lab environments.  Students are asked to use some variant of remote access software and remote into the training company's lab environment. Our student in our Palo Alto Networks Firewall course informed us that he went to a very costly offering of that course from the vendor and was not able to perform any labs.  There were either network connectivity issues, or issues with the remote access software, or other problems.  The whole training experience was very frustrating and not productive.

We keep our labs open to students if they would like after hours, or before hours access.  Repeatedly going through a lab engrains that knowledge for later recall.  Touching hardware is so critical in understanding the problems that arise when a cable comes loose, or a cable gets plugged in the wrong port.  There are other scenarios such as just pulling the power cable, or turning off a power strip, or accidently overwriting a configuration.  These disaster scenarious requires hands-on physical access to hardware.  Preventing and recovering from disasters is what it's all about, and that requires hands-on, instructor led, real hardware.

Palo Alto Networks Firewall Training Course Lab

Working with the TechNow lab for the PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack course has been nothing less than a techie's idea of fun.  When students come in we are immediatly configuring the Cisco 3750 switches for access ports, VLANS, and trunks.  We then cable the switch to the Palo Alto Networks Firewall.  Each student gets their own Palo Alto Firewall Pod of hardware and software.  What we find as fun is the VLAN environment, with an array of virtual machines hosted on an ESXi server that can really exercise the abilities of the Palo Alto Firewall.  The DMZ VLAN hosts virtual machines that support enterprise services and also potentialy vulnerable web services.  The Trust VLAN has Windows and Linux clients.  The UnTrust VLAN has Web services and a VM of Kali. The hardware Firewall is additionally connected to a Management VLAN.  All those VLANs are trunked into an ESXi server where the student also has a VM-Series Palo Alto Networks Firewall for High Availability.  

After configuring all the trunking, VLANs, and network interfaces we learn about the firewall and configure it for the lab environment.  Using Metasploitable and Kali/Metasploit nefarious penetration attempts are executed.  Using packet captures, custom APP-ID's  and custom signatures are generated.  Custom logging and reporting are created to similate and enterprise and assist the desired Incident Response.  It is always fun in a training environment to learn all about the controls available in a product, even though specific controls may not be used in the operational environment.  In the end we have a good understanding of the Palo Alto Networks Firewall.

TN-415: Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (CHFI)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course Overview:

The Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI) course delivers the security discipline of digital forensics from a vendor-neutral perspective. CHFI is a comprehensive course covering major forensic investigation scenarios and enabling students to acquire necessary hands-on experience with various forensic investigation techniques and standard forensic tools necessary to successfully carry out a computer forensic investigation leading to the prosecution of perpetrators.

The CHFI certification gives participants the necessary skills to perform an effective digital forensics investigation. CHRI presents a methodological approach to computer forensics including searching and seizing, chain-of-custody, acquisition, preservation, analysis and reporting of digital evidence

What’s Included:

  • 5 days of instructor-led in classroom training
  • Detailed Labs for hands-on learning experience; approximately 50% of training is dedicated to labs
  • Hundreds of investigation tools including EnCase, Access Data FTL, & ProDiscover
  • Huge cache of evidence files for analysis including RAW, .dd images, video & audio files, MS Office files, systems files, etc.
  • CHFI Courseware
  • Exam Voucher
  • CHFI onsite exam scheduling

Course Objectives:

  • Establish threat intelligence and key learning points to support pro-active profiling and scenario modeling
  • Perform anti-forensic methods detection
  • Perform post-intrusion analysis of electronic and digital media to determine the who, where, what, when, and how the intrusion occurred
  • Extract and analyze of logs from various devices like proxy, firewall, IPS, IDS, Desktop, laptop, servers, SIM tool, router firewall, switches AD server, DHCP logs, Access Control Logs & conclude as part of investigation process
  • Identify & check the possible source/ incident origin
  • Recover deleted files and partitions in Windows, MAC OS X, and Linux
  • Conduct reverse engineering for known and suspected malware files
  • Collect data using forensic technology methods in accordance with evidence handling procedures, including collection of hard copy and electronic documents

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Content:

    • Module 01. Computer Forensics in Today’s World
    • Module 02. Computer Forensics Investigation Process
    • Module 03. Understanding Hard Disks and File Systems
    • Module 04. Data Acquisition and Duplication
    • Module 05. Defeating Anti-forensics Techniques
    • Module 06. Operating System Forensics (Windows, Mac, Linux)
    • Module 07. Network Forensics
    • Module 08. Investigating Web Attacks
    • Module 09. Database Forensics
    • Module 10. Cloud Forensics
    • Module 10. Malware Forensics
    • Module 11. Investigating Email Crimes
    • Module 12. Investigating Email Crimes
    • Module 13. Mobile Forensics
    • Module 14. Forensics Report Writing and Presentation

 

Prerequisites:

      • 2+ years of proven information security work experience
      • Educational background with digital security specialization

    Target Audience:

      • Law Enforcement
      • Defense & Military
      • E-Business Security
      • Systems Administrators
      • Legal Professionals
      • Banking & Insurance professionals
      • Government Agencies
      • IT Managers

  • Comments

    Latest comments from students

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TN-999: Reverse Engineering Malware Course

Course Overview:

This course is designed for professionals that are expected to do malware analysis. A skills focus enables the student to better absorb the subject matter and perform successfully on the job.   This is not death by power point. The course is aligned with information assurance operators and executing hands-on labs. Lecture and labs walk the student through the knowledge required to truly understand the mechanics Reverse Engineering Malware.

Attendees to TN-999: Reverse Engineering Malware will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

  • Toolkit and Lab Assembly
  • Malware Code and Behavioral Analysis Fundamentals
  • Malicious Static and Dynamic Code Analysis
  • Collecting/Probing System and Network Activities
  • Analysis of Malicious Document Files
  • Analyzing Protected Executables
  • Analyzing Web-Based Malware
  • DLL Construction and API Hooking
  • Common Windows Malware Characteristics in x86 Assembly
  • Unpacking Protected Malware
  • In-Depth Analysis of Malicious Browser Scripts, Flash Programs and Office
  • In-Depth Analysis of Malicious Executables
  • Windows x86 Assembly Code Concepts for Revers-Engineering Memory Forensics for Rootkit Analysis

Prerequisites:

  • Strong understanding of core systems and network concepts
  • Exposure to programming and assembly concepts
  • Comfortable with command line access

Comments

Latest comments from students

User: marcus.osullivan

Instructor comments: Good stuff. I like the beginning half where there was help from an additional instructor to facilitate fixing computer errors that inevitably popped up.

Facilities comments: The baby deer were neat! I like the resort.

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