TN-855: Advanced and In-Depth ICD 503 RMF, Controls, and Assessments

Course Overview:

This course is very hands-on with respect to SP 800-53 controls as related to ICD-503, leveraging experience with DCD 6/3, and incorporating a broad array of technologies found in the field.  Assessors and Auditors have to face many technologies that are not part of the main stream.  TechNow has gone to great efforts to build a very broad, comprehensive, and complex lab to simulate many scenarios and architectures.  Technologies such as a network appliance that is not a typical infrastructure product, a radio/satellite communications device, or many other technologies that build up a weapon system.  Students learn how controls are integrated into many different devices and how they fit in the overall security architecture of monitoring, reporting, and compliance testing.

Directly discussed are overlays for different requirements i.e.: tactical, medical, network type: JWICS, SIPR; IC or AF.  TechNow has developed a funnel concept to overlays to exemplify the encapsulation of a control within different requirements.  TechNow has over 15 years experience in Trusted Solaris/Trusted Extensions and labeled security.  Cross Domain overlays are presented that fits the work flow of an assesor.  PII overlays and any overlays that an organization uses and can be made available are also presented.  

This course allows the student to leverage years of experience in DoD DCD 6/34 for transition to the Risk Management Framework (RMF) applied to the Intelligence Community as mandated by ICD 503.  Utilizing NIST SP 800-37 to establish a baseline of RMF knowledge, the student learns how to integrate the NIST pubs to provide cohesive information assurance architectures and compliance.  ICD 503 scorecard evaluations are integral in demonstrating a successful ICD 503 compliance program.  TechNow's ICD 503 course provides students with the skill to assess security programs and evaluate ICD 503 compliance to build an improvement and sustainable program for score consistency.  TechNow's instructors have unparralleled expertise in federal compliance initiatives, and we bring this expertise instructing students on the complete life cycle of RMF.

More than a simple checklist, we instruct students not only how to validate essential security controls, programs, and metrics, but that they are operating effectively.  The student leaves the course knowing how to: identify gaps where controls, programs, or metrics are incomplete, missing or ineffective, and provide actionable findings and recommend remediation strategies.  Students learn to internalize NIST pubs to meaningul and effective IA guidelines and work with the Body of Evidence templates which include: Risk Assessment Report (RAR), Systems Security Plan (SSP), Security Assessment Report (SAR), and Plans of Action and Milestone (POAM).

TechNow training materials are aligned with the most recent set of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS), and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) policies standards, processes, policies and instructions to be addressed/explained include ICD 503, ICS 503-1, ICS 500-16, ICS 500-18, ICS 500-27, ICD 502, NIST SP 800-37, NIST SP 800-30, NIST SP 800-53, NIST SP 800-53A, NIST SP 800-137, NIST SP 800-47, CNSSP 22, CNSSI 1253, and CNSSI 4009.

A majority of time is spent on in-depth compliance review of NIST SP 800-53 controls.  Instruction discusses which method should be used to test and validate each security control and what evidence should be gathered.  This course is not theory or death by power point.  Real scenarios are presented as exercises.  A complete live cyber range simulating the IC is utilized for hands-on labs for techniques of validating and documenting compliance of NIST SP 800-53 controls as related to ICD 503.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

  • Establish a baseline of RMF knowledge
  • Validate essential security controls, programs, and metrics
  • DoD DCD 6/3 to ICD 503 Transition
  • Lab Environtment and the Cyber Range
  • Overlays: Tactical, Medical, Network type(JWICS, SIPR; IC or AF), Cross Domain, PII
  • Risk Assessment Report (RAR)
  • Systems Security Plan (SSP)
  • Security Assessment Report (SAR)
  • Plans of Action and Milestone (POAM)

Prerequisites:

Experience in the field of auditing and assesments.

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N-315: Cisco Secure Virtual Private Networks

Course Overview:

This course is designed for students who intend to work with virtual private networks (VPNs) using IPSec. The course includes detailed coverage of the VPN 3000 Concentrator, a scalable remote access platform that offers encryption, high availability, and superior performance. This class is an invaluable theory and configuration guide for the VPN 3000 series of products, with its thorough coverage of concentrators, hardware clients, and software clients.

Attendees to N-315: Cisco Secure Virtual Private Networks will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

  • Network Security & Virtual Private Network Technologies Cisco VPN 3000 Concentrator Series Hardware Overview
  • Routing on the VPN 3000
  • Configuring the Cisco VPN 3000 for Remote Access Using Pre-shared Keys
  • Configuring the Cisco VPN 3000 for Remote Access Using Digital Certificates
  • The Cisco VPN Client Firewall Feature
  • Configuring the Cisco 3002 Hardware Client for Remote Access
  • Configuring the Cisco 3002 Hardware Client for User & Unit Authentication
  • Configuring Cisco VPN Clients for Backup Server, Load Balancing & Reverse Route Injection
  • Configuring the Cisco 3000 Concentrator for IPSec over TCP & UDP
  • Configuring LAN-to-LAN VPNs on the Cisco 3000
  • Network Monitoring & Administration Troubleshooting

Prerequisites:

  • Students who attend this advanced course must have experience in configuring Cisco IOS software
  • CCNA certification
  • Basic knowledge of the Windows operations system
  • Familiarity with the networking & security terms & concepts

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TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk and Compliance (CGRC)

 

Course Overview:

TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (CGRC) course is for the (ISC)²® Certified in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (CGRC) credential previously known as Certified Authorization Professional (CAP). This course walks the student through the Risk Management Framework following practices the NIST pubs. CGRC is an objective measure of the knowledge, skills and abilities required for personnel involved in the process of certifying and accrediting security of information systems. Specifically, this credential applies to those responsible for formalizing processes used to assess risk and establish security requirements. Their decisions will ensure that information systems possess security commensurate with the level of exposure to potential risk, as well as damage to assets or individuals.The CGRC credential is appropriate for civilian, state and local governments in the U.S., as well as commercial markets. CGRC certification applies to job functions such as authorization officials, system owners, information owners, information system security officers, and certifiers.  CGRC is crucial to the Management staff.

This course is the “why” of the entire security field. It provides a logical way of allocating resources where there is greatest risk and why we make the decisions we make in the field of security. It is TechNow’s view that of all the security courses we have seen, this course genuinely puts the “big picture” of security in front of the students. Students actually come to an understanding of truly what is critical to security of an enterprise versus a bunch of nuts and bolts of security.

TechNow’s CGRC course covers all of the (ISC)²® CGRC 7 Knowledge domains:

  • Security and Privacy Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance Program
  • Scope of the System
  • Selection and Approval of Framework, Security, and Privacy Controls
  • Implementation of Security and Privacy Controls
  • Assessment/ Audit of Security and Privacy Controls
  • System Compliance
  • Compliance Maintenance

RMF Related Steps

  • Prepare – Process Initiation
  • Categorize Information Systems
  • Establish the Security Control Baseline
  • Apply Security Controls
  • Assess Security Controls
  • Authorize Information System
  • Monitor Security Controls

TechNow’s CGRC Instructors have extensive knowledge and experience in the field, and have been working with organizations to build assessor teams for over 20 years.

Attendees to TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (CGRC) will receive TechNow authorized training materials, including access to the documentation of the CGRC Exam domains, and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

Date/Time Event
09/08/2025 - 09/11/2025
08:00 -16:00 		TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk and Compliance (CGRC)
TechNow, Inc, San Antonio TX

Duration: 3 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Initiate the Preparation Phase
  • Perform Execution Phase
  • Perform Maintenance Phase
  • Understand the Purpose of Security Authorization

Prerequisites:

  • IT Security
  • Information Assurance
  • Information Risk Management certification and systems administration
  • 1-2 years of general experience technical experience
  • 2 years of general systems experience
  • 1-2 years of Database/Systems Development/Network Experience
  • Information Security Policy Experience

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DO-375: Automation with Ansible and Ansible Tower

 

Course Overview:

Through hands-on labs, you will learn to automate system administration tasks on managed hosts with Ansible, learn how to write Ansible playbooks to standardize task execution, and manage encryption for Ansible with Ansible Vault. This course will also teach you how to deploy and use Red Hat® Ansible Tower to centrally manage existing Ansible projects, playbooks, and roles; perform basic maintenance and administration of the Ansible Tower installation; and configure users and teams and use them to control access to systems, projects, and other resources through role-based access controls. You will learn to use Ansible Tower’s visual dashboard to launch, control, and monitor Ansible jobs; use the Ansible Tower application programming interface (API) to launch jobs from existing templates; automatically schedule Ansible jobs; and dynamically update host inventories.

Course Objectives:

  • Install and troubleshoot Ansible on central nodes and managed hosts
  • Automate administration tasks with Ansible playbooks and ad hoc commands
  • Write effective Ansible playbooks
  • Protect sensitive data used by tasks with Ansible Vault.
  • Install and configure Ansible Tower for enterprise Ansible management
  • Use Ansible Tower to control access to inventories and machine credentials by users and teams
  • Create job templates in Ansible Tower to standardize playbook execution.
  • Centrally launch playbooks and monitor and review job results with Ansible Tower

 

Course Outline:

  • Introduce Ansible
  • Deploy Ansible
  • Implement playbooks
  • Manage variables and inclusions
  • Implement task control
  • Implement Jinja2 templates
  • Implement roles
  • Configure complex playbooks
  • Implement Ansible Vault
  • Troubleshoot Ansible
  • Install Ansible Tower and describe Ansible Tower’s architecture
  • Create users and teams for role-based access control
  • Create and manage inventories and credentials
  • Manage projects for provisioning with Ansible Tower
  • Construct advanced job workflows
  • Update inventories dynamically and compare inventory members
  • Maintenance and administration of Ansible Tower

 
Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Prerequisites:

  • Become a Red Hat Certified System Administrator, or demonstrate equivalent experience

Target Audience:

This course is designed for Linux system administrators, cloud administrators, and network administrators needing to automate configuration management, application deployment, and intraservice orchestration at an enterprise scale.

CL-425: AWS Security Operations and Architecture

Course Overview:

This course begins by introducing you to fundamental cloud computing and AWS security concepts including AWS access control and management, governance, logging, and encryption methods. It also covers security-related compliance protocols and risk management strategies, as well as procedures related to auditing your AWS security infrastructure.

The course continues to teach students how to efficiently use AWS security services to stay secure and compliant in the AWS cloud. The course focuses on the AWS-recommended security best practices that you can implement to enhance the security of your data and systems in the cloud. The course highlights the security features of AWS key services including compute, storage, networking, and database services. This course also refers to the common security control objectives and regulatory compliance standards and examines use cases for running regulated workloads on AWS across different verticals, globally. You will also learn how to leverage AWS services and tools for automation and continuous monitoring—taking your security operations to the next level.

Attendees to CL-425: AWS Security Operations and Architecture will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Duration: 5 Days

Audience:
• Security engineers
• Security architects
• Security analysts
• Security auditors
• Individuals who are responsible for governing, auditing, and testing an organization’s IT infrastructure, and ensuring conformity of the infrastructure to security, risk, and compliance guidelines

DoD 8140: Not Mandated

Course Prerequisites:

We recommend that attendees of this course have the following prerequisites:
This course assumes you have the equivalent experience or have taken the AWS operational courses that are in the TechNow AWS track.
• CL-415: AWS Security Operations

The above courses encapsulate prerequisite knowledge:
• Experience with governance, risk, and compliance regulations and control objectives
• Working knowledge of IT security practices
• Working knowledge of IT infrastructure concepts
• Familiarity with cloud computing concepts

Course Objectives:

This course teaches you how to:
• Identify the security and compliance benefits of using the AWS cloud.
• Discuss the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.
• Describe the access control and access management features of AWS.
• Use AWS services for security logging and monitoring.
• Describe data encryption methods to secure sensitive data.
• Describe AWS services used to protect network security.
• Describe the basic steps to ensure strong governance of your AWS resources.
• Identify AWS services used to maintain governance of control environments.
• Use the AWS audit features.
• Explain how to audit an AWS environment.
• Explain the AWS compliance and assurance programs.
• Describe how AWS audits and attestations validate that security controls are implemented and operating effectively.
• Assimilate and leverage the AWS shared security responsibility model.
• Mange user identity and access management in the AWS cloud.
• Use AWS security services such as AWS Identity and Access Management, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Key Management Service, AWS CloudHSM, and AWS Trusted Advisor.
• Implement better security controls for your resources in the AWS cloud.
• Manage and audit your AWS resources from a security perspective.
• Monitor and log access and usage of AWS compute, storage, networking, and database services.
• Analyze events by capturing, monitoring, processing, and analyzing logs.
• Identify AWS services and tools to help automate, monitor, and manage security operations on AWS.
• Perform security incident management in the AWS cloud.
• Perform security assessments to ensure that common vulnerabilities are patched and security best practices are applied. The assessment outline deals both with AWS specifics and also lays down the workflow of NIST, FedRAMP, and Cloud Security Alliance STAR compliance for a deployed AWS solution.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Course Outline:

Day 1
• Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS Security
• Access Control and Management
• AWS Security: Governance, Logging, and Encryption
• Compliance and Risk Management

Day 2
• Introduction to Cloud Security Course Objectives
• Security of the AWS Cloud: Entry Points, Web Application, Communications, and Incident Response.
• Cloud Aware Governance and Compliance and related control frameworks.
• Identity and Access Management
Day 3
• Securing AWS Infrastructure Services
• Securing AWS Container Services
• Securing AWS Abstracted Services
• Using AWS Security Services
Day 4
• Data Protection in the AWS Cloud
• Managing security in a hybrid environment
• Deep dive into AWS monitoring and log analysis
• Protecting against outside threats to AWS VPC
Day 5
• How to carry out a Pentest on an AWS solution
• Security Incident Management and Automating security and incident response
• Threat detection and monitoring sensitive data
• Lets Do it! Building Compliant Workloads on AWS—Case Study