Foundations of Cybersecurity

This beginner-level course, the first in the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate, introduces the cybersecurity profession and the core responsibilities and skills of entry-level analysts. Learners explore major historical and modern cyber attacks, understand how security incidents impact business operations, and see how these events shaped the cybersecurity field. The course covers the CISSP eight security domains, common security frameworks and controls, and the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) triad. It also addresses security ethics and provides an overview of common cybersecurity tools such as SIEM platforms and network protocol analyzers, as well as how analysts use programming languages like SQL and Python. By the end of the course, learners can identify security attacks and their business impact, explain key ethical principles, and recognize tools and concepts needed to start a career as a cybersecurity analyst.