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.

TN-305: Designing, Implementing, Administering and Securing Wireless Local Area Networks (LANs)

Course Overview:

This course, TN-305: Designing, Implementing, Administering and Securing Wireless Local Area Networks (LANs), covers the two main objectives for those entering the wireless world, understanding the technology & addressing its security.  TN-305: Designing, Implementing, Administering and Securing Wireless Local Area Networks (LANs) takes advantage of the student’s existing expertise to provide a challenging introductory course. Covering a broad range of wireless networking topics & an introduction on how to secure a wireless LAN from hackers. To insure wireless availability you need to understand proper design choices & administration practices. To protect valuable information on your network you need to know how attacks occur & techniques used to secure your wireless network.

Attendees to TN-305: Designing, Implementing, Administering and Securing Wireless Local Area Networks (LANs) will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Radio Frequency (RF) Fundamentals
  • Spread Spectrum Technologies
  • 802.11 Network Architecture
  • Physical & MAC Layers
  • Hardware Installation, Configuration, & Management
  • Antennas & Accessories
  • Wireless Network Management
  • Troubleshooting Wireless LANs
  • Site Surveying
  • Wireless LAN Security
  • Organizations & Standards

Prerequisites:

Attendees should have network administration skills.  These skills can be obtained through TechNow’s N-205 & N-305: CCNA/ICND Training program or our highly respected cross platform TN-385: TCP/IP Analysis & Implementation course.

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User: TMPRIESTLEY

Instructor comments: The instructor was very well versed on the topic and knew how to apply it to real-life examples. He led the labs and was very excited about the topic which kept the interest of myself and other class members. Sometimes his volume level was a little high- however the room the class was in was very small. Too small for a big personality!

Facilities comments: I was unaware of the facility changes, but that was at no fault of anyone since I was a drop-in for the course. They were very helpful and quick to mediate the issue.

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VM-345: VMware Infrastructure Security: VMware Install, Configure, and Manage with Security Objectives

 

Course Overview:

This course explores the VMware Infrastructure and related security, which consists of VMware ESX Server & VMware Virtual Center Server. We will look at both the design environments and operational processes of the VMware Infrastructure including security. This course provides IT architects with the insight needed to tackle tough issues in server virtualization such as virtual machine technologies, storage infrastructure, and designing clustered environments with security practices included. Extensive hands-on labs provide for a rich student experience.

Hypervisors and their supporting environment require attention to security due to the aggregated risk of hosting multiple virtual servers. This course explores the security of virtualized environments. Student configure ESXi by learning to manage the security and risk between ESXi, virtual servers and security integration of ESXi to the physical network infrastructure including appropriate segregation from other sensitive networks and management networks. How to configure virtual networks when some hosts are dual or multi homed, but internally segregate between the two or more connected networks with different security levels. Appropriate integration of zero-clients and thin clients. Configuration of defensive measures on hosts, servers, hypervisors within the virtual environment and practices for those guarding it externally. Integration of Active Directory and other AAA/CIA related services relative to a virtualized environment.

Students are also walked through DoD ESXi Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG). Introduction to the impact of Intel Trusted Execution Technology integrated with ESXi to create a trusted platform for virtual machines. Additionally the instructor walks the students through NIST Special Publication 800-125A: Security Recommendations for Hypervisor Deployment on Servers, and NIST Special Publication 800-125B: Secure Virtual Network Configuration for Virtual Machine (VM) Protection.

Attendees to “VM-345: VMware Infrastructure Security: VMware Install, Configure, and Manage with Security Objectives” will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

• Virtual Infrastructure Overview
• ESX and ESXi Server Installation
• Configuration of Networking, Scalability and Security
• Storage
• Install and Configure vCenter Server and Components
• Creation, Deployment, Management, and Migration of Virtual Machines
• Utilize vCenter Server for Resource Management
• Utilize vCenter Server for Virtual Machine Access Control and User Managment
• Use vCenter Server to increase scalability
• Monitoring Your Environment
• Data & Availability Protection Troubleshooting
• Use VMware vCenter Update Manager to apply ESXi patches
• Use vCenter Server to manage vMotion, HA, DRS and data protection.

TN-905: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analysis

 

Course Overview:

TechNow has worked worldwide enterprise infrastructures for over 30 years and has developed demos and labs to exemplify the techniques required to demonstrate technologies that effectively support CTI.  This course integrates well with our courses TN-575: Open Source Network Security Monitoring and TN-865: Wireshark Network Traffic and Security Analysis .

TechNow develops Cyber Ranges and makes them available for conferences in support of annual meetings for Cyber Threat Response Teams.  Developing scenarios and reacting to them appropriately is a big part of the value in understanding the contexts required to comprehend valuable CTI.   As with many advanced TechNow security courses, there is a large hands-on ratio.  This course helps Cyber Protection Teams (CPT), Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO), and Mission Defense Teams (MDT) to collect, analyze and apply targeted cyber intelligence to defensive operations in order to proactively act on and tune response to attacks by cyber adversaries.  CPT, DCO, and MDT can take preemptive action by utilizing CTI, understanding CTI tools, techniques and procedures (TTPs) needed to generate and consume timely and relevant intelligence to improve resilience and prevention.

This course focuses on the collection, classification, and exploitation of knowledge about adversaries and their TTPs. .  MDT puts us close the mission and helps define the internal context to be analyzed against the CTI.  TechNow pushes the student to truly understand how to think about and use CTI to make a difference.

Attendees to TN-905: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analysis will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Course Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

  • Learn to comprehend and develop complex scenarios
  • Identify and create intelligence requirements through practices such as threat modeling
  • Utilize threat modeling to drive intelligence handling and practices 
  • Breakdown tactical, operational, and strategic-level threat intelligence
  • Generate threat intelligence to detect, respond to, and defeat focused and targeted threats
  • How to collect adversary information creating better value CTI
  • How to filter and qualify external sources, mitigating low integrity intelligence
  • Create Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) in formats such as YARA, OpenIOC, and STIX
  • Move security maturity past IOCs into understanding and countering the behavioral tradecraft of threats
  • Breaking down threats mapped against their tradecraft to tweak IOCs
  • Establish structured analytical techniques to be successful in any security role
  • Learn and apply structured principles in support of CTI and how to communicate that to any security role.

Course Prerequisites:

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TN-5415: Installation, Storage, and Compute with Windows Server 2016

 

Course Overview:

Course one of a three course series to obtain a Server 2016 MCSA certification. This five-day course is designed primarily for IT professionals who have some experience with Windows Server. It is designed for professionals who will be responsible for managing storage and compute by using Windows Server 2016, and who need to understand the scenarios, requirements, and storage and compute options that are available and applicable to Windows Server 2016.

The course leads directly to preparing for the(MCSA):Windows Server 2016 exam “70-740: Installation, Storage, and Compute with Windows Server 2016”.  It also maps to Microsoft’s course 20740A, and is part of the Server 2016 MCSA certification. 

Attendees to TN-5415: Installation, Storage, and Compute with Window Server 2016 will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Prepare and install Nano Server, a Server Core installation, and plan a server upgrade and migration strategy
  • Describe the various storage options, including partition table formats, basic and dynamic disks, file systems, virtual hard disks, and drive hardware, and explain how to manage disks and volumes
  • Describe enterprise storage solutions, and select the appropriate solution for a given situation
  • Implement and manage Storage Spaces and Data Deduplication
  • Install and configure, and manage Windows and Hyper-V containers
  • Describe the high availability and disaster recovery technologies in Windows Server 2016
  • Plan, create, and manage a failover cluster
  • Implement failover clustering for Hyper-V virtual machines
  • Configure a Network Load Balancing (NLB) cluster, and plan for an NLB implementation
  • Create and manage deployment images
  • Manage, monitor, and maintain virtual machine installations

Prerequisites:

  • A basic understanding of networking fundamentals
  • An awareness and understanding of security best practices
  • An understanding of basic AD DS concepts
  • Basic knowledge of server hardware
  • Experience supporting and configuring Windows client operating systems such as Windows 10
  

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