Technology has always been an incredibly major part of our world. This is especially true over the past few decades, as technological advancements have become more and more impressive.
As a result, technology plays a part in almost everything, and this is particularly the case when it comes to business.
As businesses have relied more on technology, new types of threats have emerged, such as cybersecurity.
Companies and organizations are now vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks, and as a result it’s essential that they have the correct knowledge, skills, and cybersecurity tools at hand to keep themselves protected.
This is where Infosec Skills comes in. Infosec is a company based around providing security education to company workforces, so that they may all be better protected against malicious digital threats.
Infosec Skills is their education platform, giving users a hands-on training experience for IT, engineering, and security teams to have their cyberskills improved in a range of ways, teaching them how to tackle a whole range of cybersecurity threats and issues.
But what world class features does Infosec Skills offer – and is it worth trying for your company?
You’ll find the answer to all this and more in our detailed Infosec skills review below! We’ll be breaking down the various features that Infosec Skills can offer your company, as well as the benefits and any potential disadvantages that could come from using the platform. Read on!
Infosec Skills – An Overview
Infosec Skills is an online platform that is built especially for companies and organizations to improve their knowledge of cybersecurity, training material for them in all sorts of different areas that will help better protect themselves from cybersecurity risks.
With the help of Infosec Skills, your team should end up with secure skills in coding, as well as knowledge all about defending your company’s critical digital assets.
Any company should have a team that’s knowledgeable in these areas, because it will help to reduce the business’ risk.
A Wide Range Of Educational Content
Infosec Skills provides your company with unlimited access to over 1400 different on-demand courses and labs.
These will help to teach your team an enormous range of different cybersecurity skills, as well as revising the ones that already have. Better yet, the labs give them a more hands-on way to put their knowledge to practical use.
On top of that, the courses and labs can be accessed whenever your team needs them. This means that the educational program is very flexible and can be fitted around your team’s busy schedule.
Infosec understands that business is a busy game, and employees aren’t always going to have the time to do their courses – so they can arrange them around themselves instead.
On the other hand, Infosec Skills also offers a “Boot Camp” program. This makes the education live, with training sessions and courses led by live instructors, rather than videos and other pre-made content.
If you can organize the team so that they have the time for this live training, it will give them a much more hands-on and involved approach, as well as allowing them the opportunity to get live help and ask questions whenever they need.
Organized Learning
As for Infosec Skill’s entire training program, it’s divided into over 190 learning paths that have been pre-built and mapped to the industry standards, making sure that your team is getting a reliable education in relevant matters.
On top of that, the learning paths are also mapped to the “NICE Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity”, which is the foundation which aims to increase the capability and size of America’s cybersecurity workforce.
In terms of the hands-on labs to put your team’s new knowledge and skill development to the test, there are hundreds of them available, in a wide cyber range of cybersecurity areas.
For example, there are labs for your team to practice advanced adversarial techniques and tactics to do with MITRE ATT&CK, which is a massive knowledge-base full of advice and strategies to battle cybersecurity risks.
Infosec Skills provides instructor led training guaranteed all kinds of well-known cybersecurity organizations, such as ISACA, CompTIA, EC-Council and many more.
These are some of the biggest cybersecurity organizations and associations, and being able to work with their own courses and techniques targeting will help your team to gain well-established and relevant skills.
Knowledge And Performance
With this massive library to assign training content, it’s important to reiterate that companies will get unlimited access to the whole range of it, allowing them to become as knowledgeable in cybersecurity as they can be from it.
Handily, Infosec Skills also provides tools for you to manage how your engineering teams are doing, tracking work progress, and see where they might need to refocus or improve.
For example, you can see how much learning time they’ve spent, the scores for their assessments, how far they’re getting through assignments, and more.
This is very useful for making sure that your team is on the same page and possesses the same skills and knowledge.
What Features Does Infosec Skills Offer?
Cybersecurity Courses
Infosec Skills provides its users with enormous cyber ranges, teaching them about countless different areas and techniques to battle digital threats.
All of their training is specifically mapped onto the “NICE Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity”, meaning that the information is the most relevant and up to date it can be.
Courses cover all kinds of different areas of cybersecurity, helping your team to become better prepared for whatever possible attacks your company could face, as well as teaching them to better protect the company in the first place.
Courses are provided by some of the biggest names in cybersecurity, such as CompTIA, CertNexus, the Information Assurance Certification Review Board (IACRB), and more.
There are far too many courses to cover, so we’ll look at a few random examples to give you an idea of the variety of content on offer.
One of the courses that IACRB offers is “Advanced Exploitation”, which teaches your team about client-side and server-side attacks, the features of the Metasploit Project program, attacks against network-based protocols, and much more.
It only takes about half an hour to complete, but leaves your team with much greater knowledge of some important areas – which can be said of a lot of the hundreds and hundreds of courses accessible through Infosec technical Skills.
Another course example is the CertNexus course on “Assessing Information Security Risk”. In just under two hours, this course will teach your team how to assess and mitigate risks, and understand overall just how important it is to do proper risk management.
Good security isn’t just about reacting to threats when they happen, but to understand your risks well beforehand and be prepared for them.
Labs And Hands-On Learning
The courses that we’ve just been talking about involve videos that teach your team the relevant information. Video content can be incredibly useful, but there are times when a more hands-on approach is needed.
When the custom learning paths are pre-recorded, rather than live, a team is already going to be missing the physical input and guidance of a teacher who can respond to their questions.
As a result, it can be handy to get a more hands-on experience, which is what Infosec Skills’ labs offer. Labs are like assignments, putting your team to the practice tests and giving them a chance to demonstrate the new knowledge and skills that the courses have taught them.
Labs are easy to launch, allowing your team to get to work testing their new skills very quickly.
Labs particularly focus on Mitre ATT&CK techniques, which will give your team some of the most important tactics there are for defending your company from cyber threats.
For example,they can take part in labs that teach them about compromise infrastructure, vulnerability scanning, replication through media that’s removable, and much more.
On top of that, labs have exercises for both your red and blue teams.
Red and blue teams are groups that work towards improving your cybersecurity, but the red team role-plays as the cyber attacker and the blue team acts as the defender.
They’re a brilliant way for your company to identify the holes in its cybersecurity systems, while also practicing defending such areas.
The red and blue team labs provide training for a wide variety of NICE Framework roles, too.
For example, they provide essential hand-on practice for Threat/Warning Analysts, Exploitation Analysts, Cyber Defense Analysts, and more.
You should have these roles filled on your company’s cybersecurity teams, and the labs provided by Infosec Skills will help those employers to consolidate and grow their knowledge.
Role-Guided Training
Speaking of roles, Infosec Skills offers role-guided training plans that will help members of your team to train towards specific roles and track their gradual improvements through the world of cybersecurity.
Infosec Skill has their own specific roles for users to train towards or progress through, and each has information on the relevant real-world job roles that you can apply for when you’re at the level of the Infosec Skills role.
These roles begin with “Cybersecurity Beginner”, which allows a starting point for members of your company to get the foundational skills that will prepare them to continue into a career in cybersecurity.
After that comes “Security Architect”, where employees will be taught how to plan, design, test, initiate, and upkeep the computer security infrastructure for an organization.
The roles continue, each teaching employees new skills.
For example, “Secure Coder” focuses on teaching users how to develop and write code that is secure and can protect your company against cybersecurity flaws, while the “Cloud Security Engineer” role teaches users how to design, develop, and maintain a secure infrastructure that uses cloud platforms.
Whatever job roles that users want to train for, the Infosec Skills roe-guided training will help get them the skills they need.
Live Boot Camp
In addition to the courses and the labs, teams can also take part in a wide range of different “Boot Camps”. These are completely live courses that are led by knowledgeable instructor led training.
Although pre-recorded courses can provide lots of knowledge, and labs can help teams put their knowledge to use, a live educational course is an incredibly helpful tool that provides a more involving learning experience.
Each of Infosec Skill’s Boot Camps come with unlimited practice exam attempts, an exam pass guarantee (apart from in CMMC-AB boot camps), an exam voucher and more.
They’re a quick and engaging way for teams to get their industry certification courses, proving that they have certain levels of cybersecurity knowledge.
On top of that, each Boot Camp comes with one year of access to all of the relevant material and video replays, allowing users to refer back to what they’ve learned.
Additionally, there are 100s of on-demand courses and labs to get stuck into and improve knowledge too.
What Does Infosec Skills Cost?
There are two plans to choose from with infosec Skills. The first one is the “Personal” plan, which is typically around $299 and is made for an individual to use.
It includes 100s of labs to test their skills, over 190 role-guided learning paths, skill assessments, practice exams, and community support.
The other plan is “Teams”, which is what companies will choose, allowing them to train up whole groups of employees.
It costs more, usually $799, and offers the benefits of the “Personal Plan”, as well as integrations through API, team admin and reporting tools, a dedicated manager for client success, and more.
What Does Infosec Skills Do Well?
- Enormous range of cybersecurity courses, related to well-known organizations
- Labs for hands-on experiences
- Boot Camp program for live tutoring
- Plans for individuals or teams
- Role-guided lifelong learning prepares users for specific jobs
What Does Infosec Skills Do Poorly?
- Needs more options for downloading courses content for offline use
- A mobile app would be useful, allowing users to learn on the go
Final Thoughts
Infosec Skills is a great way to train up entire teams in essential aspects of cybersecurity, and there are only a few accessibility downsides.
