About this Book

This book is intended to introduce core cybersecurity topics using a hands-on approach. The main audience is people who need a broad understanding of core cybersecurity concepts and technologies. Generally, this book is a mile wide and an inch deep. This book should be seen as a launching point for learning about cybersecurity, not the ultimate destination. An emphasis is given to learning how to learn by understanding documentation and performing small experiments.

Previous versions of this book relied on VirtualBox. However, changes in students' laptops made it difficult for some to run virtual machines. For example, some students had limited RAM, others ran the Chrome operating system, and some had Mac laptops with the M2 chip. I decided to rewrite these instructions to run Windows and Linux virtual machines in the cloud using the AWS Academy. Running virtual machines in the cloud provides a better layer of abstraction from the student laptops.