Cybersecurity Job Simulation

This course provided an in-depth review of the concept of phishing and the dangers associated with it, phishing is a contributor to the $500 billion lost to cyber crime each year. The course focused on identifying phishing methods and how to spread awareness on the problem in an engaging and meaningful way. The course required me to analyze departments within a business and data collected about attempted phishing attacks and aim to create an engaging slideshow on how to stop phishing.

The primary focus of this course was split into many different activities and goals to help gain a deeper understanding of cyber awareness and key concepts, the learning objectives set out were:

• Gain a knowledge of what Phishing is and understand the methods used to obtain data.
• Identify departments and areas where Phishing was common and understand why.
• Create clear and highly engaging presentations and prevention techniques to mitigate risk.
• Sharpen your skills in communication and as a cybersecurity educator to bring awareness to a dangerous problem.

In this course I was tasked with understanding what phishing was and how dangerous it can be. To ensure I understood the dangers of Phishing I was assigned an Email Task, My job was to spot obvious flaws with corporate emails that could indicate malicious intent and inauthenticity. These flaws came in the form of spelling errors, feigned urgency and spoofed signatures. The goal of Phishing is to create an email that looks as real as possible. My next task had me design a phishing email to use within a corporation to test awareness & integrity. The main goal being to use social engineering to test employees on awareness on the dangers of Phishing.

My next task was to identify the departments that had clicked the Phishing email the most and try and gain an understanding on why. Clear communication and spreading awareness relies on targeting vulnerable departments and individuals who may not possess the technical awareness that other people/departments have. The task had me compare percentages and write a report on why I thought they were most vulnerable.

For my last task I was assigned with researching, designing and creating an In depth specialized security awareness presentation with the goal being to spread awareness and highlight preventive methods of Phishing. The presentation had to be informative and concise while simultaneously being short and engaging. I created my presentation using Google Slides along with researching articles by IBM & NCSC. Creating the presentation helped me sharpen my education and communication skills while also allowing me to gain a better understanding on the dangers of phishing and how to prevent yourself from contributing to the $500 billion loss due to cyber crime.

To complete this course it involved research and creative design which was completed using recognisable and trusted sources along with a presentation creator that allowed me to design and bring an informative and concise presentation to life. The tools I used:

HOVER OVER AN ASSET

This course was extremely useful and informative for me as it sharpened my skills in Social Engineering, Researching, Security awareness & Educating. The course was very well built and helped me gain an understanding of phishing and the dangers it can bring. It put into perspective the simplicity and common traps used to lie and deceive people. Overall, this course improved my creativity & communication while providing me with a deep knowledge of phishing, the dangers associated with it, how to identify it, and ways to prevent it.