- Now, when we talk about establishing a plan,
I want to step back a little bit
because before starting a plan,
you have to think about, what do you know?
In the previous lesson, we finish with that table
that shows the self-assessment level of knowledge, 100, 200,
and I hope that you've done that exercise
to evaluate yourself.
Now, you need to start get familiar
with some of the terminologies in cybersecurity.
So here, an exercise for you.
Access this article,
just go to Google and type the this title,
"Federal agencies hacked
using legitimate remote desktop tools."
Search for this article.
And if you pay attention, right in this second paragraph
that is highlighted in the slide,
there are a couple of terminologies
that is very important for you to understand.
VPN, VDI, phishing, spear-phishing emails,
those are some of the terminologies
that you're gonna hear very often
in the cybersecurity field.
The question is, do you know what those things are about?
And if you do know, how deep do you know?
And that's what we're gonna go through now
because this is the scenario is a VPN.
The scenario is a VPN.
So what I want you to reflect,
I want you to reflect about some questions
as you look to this diagram.
So as you look to this diagram, think about,
how was the encrypted tunnel established?
So the whole point of VPN
is to encrypt the communication tunnel,
so that the information that is passing through
cannot be sniffed, cannot be intercepted.
It's about privacy, it's about security, right?
So that's why the VPN is so popular nowadays
because it allows you to use the internet,
which is a untrusted network,
to pass through secret information through the tunnel.
But how was this encrypted tunnel established?
What are the protocols if you think about?
If VPN is secure,
why there is a firewall in front of the VPN server?
So think about that too.
As you look to this diagram, you see the VPN client,
you see the encrypted tunnel, or you see the internet,
and then there is a firewall
right in front of the VPN server.
Why is that?
Do you know why?
If you know why, great.
Because you already have a level of knowledge
about this topic that is important for you to have
as you start this career in cybersecurity.
The other question, if you think about is,
why there is another firewall behind the VPN server?
There's two firewalls, okay?
Think about that.
And think about, what is the role of directory service
in this VPN architecture?
So pause the vid for a second, think about those questions,
and resume so we can discuss about it.
Okay, I hope that you have reflected.
Of course, take the amount of time that you need
to reflect about those things.
But the encrypted tunnel,
how this encrypted and established is via protocols.
So there are security protocols
that will encapsulate this communication.
The client and the server,
they need to agree on which protocol they need to use.
The protocol, we will encrypt the tunnel.
As long as client and servers are speaking the same protocol
and have agreements on the parameters that will be utilized,
the tunnel is established.
Now, the second question is,
if the VPN is secure, why there is a firewall?
Well, the firewall is there for other purpose, right?
Well, first of all, the firewall is there
to block all the traffics that are coming from the internet.
So this is the outbound firewall.
It's the firewall that is in the edge of the network,
blocking access coming from the internet
to ports that are not supposed to be open.
That's why the firewall is gonna open only ports
that are supposed to be open
to talk with the servers that are published to the internet.
Then there is the other firewall behind,
which is the internal firewall
that regulates or controls or monitor,
filter the traffic
in between the internet and the internal network.
In between those,
usually there is a place called perimeter or DMZ.
It's the place where you're gonna publish your web server,
your mail server.
Usually, it's located on that shared zone.
And shared zone means there are some resources
that will be accessed from the internet.
There are others that are accessed
from the internal network.
So the two firewall approach is a way for you
to have more control over that communication.
What is the role of directory service?
Well, directory service is important for the authentication
and authorization purpose,
because when the client is connecting,
not only the protocols needs to be in agreement
but the client and it needs to be successful authenticated.
So this is just an overview.
If you have this level of knowledge,
this is great because you understand networking.
Now, my suggestion is continue to explore, right?
Because we are talking about foundational knowledge.
So here is just an example.
You have the cybersecurity article,
you have the main topic, VPN,
and then you have the breakdown
of things that belong to the VPN,
such as network protocols, encryption,
directory services, and network devices.
As you can see, there's a lot of things
that you probably already know from your previous experience
working in networking or information technology
that you can leverage.
Now, if you are fully new, if you just started your career
and you have zero knowledge on IT, that's fine.
It only allows you to say,
"Wow, I have this other things that I need to be aware
before I even dive into cybersecurity,"
because these are the foundational knowledge
that you need to have.