Become a Skilled Cybersecurity Professional with Udacity’s School of Cybersecurity

As global organizations move toward digitization and digital transformation becomes the new norm, cyber-attacks have become more common and severe. In fact, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center estimates a 300% rise in reported cybercrimes. 

Additionally, more than 68% of business leaders realize that they are at risk for cyber attacks. As the need for cybersecurity grows, so does the need for professionals to help corporations shield themselves from attacks.

In an effort to train the world’s workforce in the careers of the future, including cybersecurity, we’re excited to introduce the School of Cybersecurity to offer a complete career path through our specialized Nanodegree programs — Intro to Cybersecurity, Security Analyst, Security Engineer, and Ethical Hacker —  meant to provide the skills you need to become ready for a job in the cybersecurity field.

A recent report from RiskBased Security called 2020 the “worst year on record” for cybersecurity — 36 billion records were exposed as the result of cyber attacks as of the end of September 2020. Despite this staggering number, it still takes an average of 207 days for an organization to identify a cybercrime.

Such gaps in cybersecurity create a lot of space for skilled cybersecurity professionals to prevent database breaches. To shore up protection against cybercrime, organizations will invest in more cybersecurity professionals.  

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that jobs in information security will grow by 31% between 2018 and 2028, which is significantly faster than the rate of growth for all jobs (4%) or computer jobs (11%). In fact, Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs globally by 2021, up from one million positions in 2014.

In short, cybersecurity is a high-demand and high-growth field that is possible to get into from a variety of backgrounds and is an ever-evolving, exciting field. 

Udacity’s School of Cybersecurity offers a flexible online learning approach that equips students with the knowledge and problem-solving skills — from actual practitioners — that prepare them for the complex and dynamic field of cybersecurity.

The School of Cybersecurity offers the following Nanodegree programs:

This Nanodegree program is perfect for getting started in the high-growth field of Cybersecurity by building foundational skills like how to evaluate, maintain and monitor the security of computer systems.

You’ll learn how to assess threats, respond to incidents and implement security controls to reduce risk and meet security compliance goals.

The Introduction to Cybersecurity Nanodegree program offers the right combination of structured content and real-life projects to prepare you for the challenges faced by global organizations. 

Earlier this year we launched the Security Analyst Nanodegree program. The program is designed to help you learn the skills that will help you identify, correct, and respond quickly to security weaknesses and incidents.

The Nanodegree program comes with an array of projects, requiring you to act as a security analyst and plan for security controls, identify threats, execute a vulnerability assessment, and develop an Intrusion Detection System. These projects provide hands-on experience to make you ready for jobs in cybersecurity. 

For those interested in cybersecurity engineering, the Security Engineer Nanodegree program gives students the real-world experience they’ll need to be ready for the first day of their new job.

This program will help you master the foundational skills necessary to become a successful Security Engineer. The program focuses on how to protect a company’s computer systems, networks, applications, and infrastructure from security threats or attacks.

The Ethical Hacker Nanodegree program will equip students with the skills they need to advance their cybersecurity careers and become ethical hackers or penetration testers. 

Through our industry-designed course structure and real-world projects, you will learn how to find and exploit vulnerabilities and weaknesses in various systems, build-out and execute a penetration testing plan and report on findings using evidence from the project.

According to Glassdoor, the average base salary of a cybersecurity engineer is $99,834 which can go up to $130,000. This means that there is a lot of opportunities to grow and earn in this field.

If you want to begin your career in cybersecurity then check out our School of Cybersecurity and enroll in your favorite Nanodegree program now.