SC-100 course outline - Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Updated: 2023

The following cybersecurity certifications are excellent ways to firm up your skill set and bolster your resume for hiring managers seeking to attract and retain the best employees.

1. Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals

The Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals certification is one of the most “entry-level” certifications we’re highlighting. Aimed at students, business users and IT professionals, this cert recognizes knowledge of numerous cybersecurity topics, including general Microsoft 365 and Azure. It also recognizes general IT knowledge or work experience and familiarity with cloud and networking computing concepts. To achieve certification, you must pass a single exam, which costs $99.

To Strengthen your chances of achieving this certification, Microsoft recommends using its self-paced Microsoft Learn content. Microsoft also suggests attending instruction events, taking practice exams and shadowing people who work in security, compliance, and identity management. 

Microsoft certifications include numerous options for network engineers, security engineers and security operations analysts.

2. ISACA Cybersecurity Fundamentals

Folks in the security industry know ISACA for such long-running certificates as its Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and similar certifications – all of which grant intermediate to advanced credentials. They’re designed for IT professionals who want to help prevent and avoid network security threats and vulnerabilities.

The Cybersecurity Fundamentals certificate is designed to fill the entry-level niche. This certificate covers four cybersecurity-related domains: 

• Threat landscape
• Information security fundamentals
• Securing access
• Security operations and response

The single exam costs $150 for ISACA members and $199 for nonmembers. The certificate doesn’t expire or require periodic recertification.

3. CompTIA Security+

Perhaps the most well-known entry-level security certification is the CompTIA Security+, which covers a wide array of security and information assurance topics, including:

• Network security
• Threats and vulnerabilities
• Access controls
• Cryptography
• Risk management principles
• Application, host and data security 

The certification meets U.S. Department of Defense Directive 8570.01-M requirements – an essential item for anyone looking to work in IT security for the federal government – and complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act.

CompTIA recommends that candidates have two years of relevant experience and achieve the Network+ credential before taking the Security+ exam. At $392, this exam lands roughly midway between the least and most expensive compared to other entry-level certifications. The Security+ certificate leads to such jobs as security administrator, systems administrator and network engineer, among others.

CompTIA is known for its vendor-neutral certification program. In general, CompTIA certifications are grouped according to skill set and focus on real-world skills all IT professionals need.

4. GIAC Information Security Fundamentals (GISF)

GIAC gears the GISF certification toward system administrators, managers and information security officers who need a solid overview of computer networks, security policies, incident response and cryptographic principles. 

The GISF exam is considered to be more challenging than the CompTIA Security+ exam. GIAC certification exams in general require test takers to apply knowledge and problem-solving skills, so hands-on experience gained through training or on-the-job experience is recommended.

The GISF exam costs $949. Although GIAC includes two practice exams in the certification-attempt package, this exam price is exceptionally high.

After achieving the GISF, consider pursuing the GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC), an intermediate-level certification that takes a big step beyond foundational information security concepts.

Check out our picks for the best business continuity and disaster recovery certifications to help you learn to recover systems after a disaster.

5. (ISC)² Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP)

The (ISC)² Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is probably the most recognizable and popular security certification today. But (ISC)² offers several other security-related certifications, with the ANSI-accredited SSCP filling the entry-level slot. 

The SSCP prepares you for such jobs as security analyst, network security engineer and security administrator, which typically start at the junior level if you don’t already have technical or engineering-related information technology experience.

To achieve the SSCP, you must pass a single exam that includes questions that span seven common body of knowledge (CBK) domains:

• Access Controls
• Security Operations and Administration
• Risk Identification, Monitoring and Analysis
• Incident Response and Recovery
• Cryptography
• Network and Communications Security
• Systems and Application Security

To ensure that you have sufficient hands-on security knowledge before taking the exam, (ISC)² recommends that you attend training courses or conference workshops, participate in webinars, and read white papers and books.

The exam costs $2,490, and (ISC)² offers a variety of study resources for purchase on its website.

Many additional niche cybersecurity certifications can help you advance your IT career. For example, you can also achieve big data certifications, digital forensics certifications, computer hardware certifications and networking certifications.

Wiz brings native AI security capabilities to its CNAPP

November 16: CNAPP vendor Wiz has introduced Wiz for AI Security, which adds native AI security capabilities to its cloud-native application protection platform. It has four main components: AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM), an AI security dashboard, and AI extensions for Wiz's Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and Attack Path Analysis capabilities.

AI-SPM is designed to mitigate the risk of shadow AI by providing visibility into all resources and technology in an organization's AI pipeline. The company claims it can detect AI services across cloud services, SDKs, and AI technologies such as AWS SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI, and Azure Cognitive Research.

By extending DSPM to AI, Wiz aims to identify and protect AI training data in the cloud by providing out-of-the-box controls. Attack paths that risk data leakage or poisoning can then be removed.

Attack Path Analysis can now assess AI pipeline risk across vulnerabilities, identities, data, misconfigurations, and more. Those risks can then be correlated on the Wiz Security Graph and potential attack paths can be removed.

Wiz's new AI security dashboard is intended to help AI developers understand their AI security posture. It provides a prioritized list of risks as well as an AI inventory and known AI SDK vulnerabilities.

IONIX adds exposure management features to its attack surface management platform

November 16: IONIX has announced the launch of Threat Exposure Radar, which the company calls the first threat exposure management capability. IONIX will integrate the new technology with its attack surface management (ASM) platform. IONIX claims that Threat Exposure Radar provides a unified view of exposure to threats across the enterprise including cloud, on-premises, SaaS, and third-party systems.

The new solution consolidates security findings into a single view with two options: a radar-like visualization and a summary table from which users can drill down for more explanation or instructions for mitigating the exposed assets. Data is color-coded to highlight urgent items needing attention.

Living Security announces Human Risk Operations Center

November 15: Living Security has announced the Human Risk Operations Center (HROC), a combination of the security operations center (SOC) security awareness and training, and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) teams. HROC is powered by the company's Unify platform and aggregates and correlates employee behaviors using data from an organization's existing security tools.

The company claims it offers one pane of glass with real-time visibility into a company's riskiest people, departments, and programs. This helps SOC and GRC teams plan next actions and measures the impact of improving policies and behaviors. It supports API integrations for some of the most popular security tools including CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Proofpoint, and Zscaler.

HROC is available now and can be deployed in existing Security Operations Centers or as a standalone offering worldwide, and it is priced based on the size of the organization.

SecureAuth announces new release of Arculix access management and authentication platform

November 15: SecureAuth has released a new version of its Arculix access management and authentication platform. The new release includes enhancements to its Orchestration Engine and improved integration with some Citrix applications and Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure). Orchestration Engine improvements include a no-code, drag-and-drop environment to more easily integrate and deploy identity services. Administrators can customize the end-user identity lifecycle including registration, verification, authentication, and post-authorization. Orchestration Engine is available to customers who use the premium version of Arculix, which is sold on a per-user/monthly active user basis.

By integrating with Citrix through its Device Trust solution, Arculix can provide what SecureAuth promises to be a "frictionless login experience." Arculix can now authenticate users directly against Microsoft Entra ID, allowing for pass-through authentication.

Sophos adds three new threat detection and response solutions

November 14: Cybersecurity-as-a-service vendor Sophos has announced three new solutions and capabilities designed to protect against active threats. Sophos Firewall v20 software with Active Threat Response will identify, stop, and block attacks without the need to add firewall rules, according to the company. The new version also integrates with Sophos's Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) gateway, which allows secure remote access to applications behind the firewall. The company has also enhanced the network scalability of Sophos Firewall to support distributed environments, and it has improved ease-of-use management.

Sophos Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) customers now have access to Sophos Network Detection and Response (NDR) with XDR. Sophos NDR scans network activity for potentially malicious traffic patterns.

Finally, Sophos has enhanced its XDR solution with more third-party integrations to connect security data across multiple sources for faster detection and response, according to the company. Security operations and analyst workflow and case management features have also been improved to better filter alerts and provide visibility from a single console.

OneSpan adds passwordless authentication to its DigiPass Authenticator line

November 14: Digital agreements security company OneSpan has announced an enhancement to its Digipass Authenticators line. DIGIPASS FX1 BIO enables passwordless authentication via a physical passkey and fingerprint scan. The company claims this combination of biometric authentication and public-key cryptography will help companies meet compliance requirements, reduce phishing and other social engineering attacks, and Strengthen the user experience. DIGIPASS FX1 BIO is based on the FIDO standard.

Stream Security announces Cloud Twin cloudsecops platform

November 14: Stream Security (formerly Lightlytics) has announced three new features for its Cloud Twin engine, a cloud security operations (cloudsecops) platform that can help detect and investigate threats and exposures in their cloud environments. The company claims it can now map cloud dependencies in real-time rather than periodically, allowing security and operations teams to better cooperate to address security gaps.

The new features, which will be automatically available to existing customers, are:

• Azure integration: Cloud Twin now supports Microsoft Azure, which Stream Security claims allows it to model all the possible paths and traffic between different cloud platforms.
• Vulnerability correlation: The platform can help security teams prioritize efforts by correlating vulnerabilities with their exploitability level.
• Threat anomaly detection: Cloud Twin now has threat anomaly detection capabilities to identify malicious behavior and unauthorized access.

Kasada launches KasadaIQ attack prediction services

November 14: Threat detection and management firm Kasada has launched a new attack prediction platform designed to counter bot fraud. The KasadaIQ suite debuted with its first service, KasadaIQ for Fraud, with plans to add more capabilities in the future.

KasadaIQ for Fraud is designed to provide businesses with insight into how bots target digital channels and customer data by offering visibility into non-traditional data sources and adversary communities through the "capability to detect attacks before they happen and confirm threats that would otherwise go undetected," the company said.

Core functions of KasadaIQ for Fraud include:

Unconventional sourcing: Kasada monitors activity within non-traditional sources — including resale marketplaces, fraud groups, proxy providers, account generation groups, and hosting providers.

Early warnings: Kasada's analysts first identify and vet current and emerging threats within its data system, then send out advance alerts. 

Bot acquisition and analysis: Kasada secretly purchases bots in circulation and extensively analyzes how they work.

Stolen credential analysis: Kasada purchases and evaluates stolen credential sets from criminal marketplaces to help the customer remedy security gaps and online fraud.

Dedicated analyst hours: Customers receive a set amount of analyst hours for Kasada to investigate what's most relevant to their needs, such as intel on fraud groups or reverse-engineering attacks.

Professional services: Kasada will scope custom requirements and provide expert guidance on how to best achieve the desired outcomes.

Cycode debuts ConnectorX with application security posture management capability

November 14: Application security posture management (ASPM) provider Cycode has launched its click-and-consume third-party ASPM connector platform ConnectorX and announced significant enhancements to its risk intelligence graph (RIG) for risk-based prioritization. The platform aims to foster improved collaboration between security and development teams. It includes more than 40 software development lifecycle integrations, including the introduction of support for Wiz and Black Duck.

The Cycode platform provides companies with the choice to use its native ASPM tools or maximize investments in their existing AppSec tools. Companies can plug in any AppSec solution and "within minutes," gain accurate, real-time visibility into their security posture, according to the company.

DirectDefense ThreatAdvisor 3.0 aims to streamline security operations with SOAR technology

November 14: Information security services company DirectDefense has launched ThreatAdvisor 3.0, a major update to its proprietary security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platform. ThreatAdvisor 3.0 is designed to Strengthen the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of DirectDefense's Security Operations Center (SOC), the company said in a press release.

The platform offers customized continuous security monitoring and management, automates manual processes, and includes an extensive knowledge base for compliance, security events and mitigation techniques. ThreatAdvisor 3.0 integrates with other solutions to provide a single interface for threat management with more data and better context, the company claims. The platform collects and processes vulnerability and asset data from several sources and compiles them into a holistic view of an organization's security posture, supporting penetration testing, operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) assessments, vulnerability management, managed detection and response (MDR), compliance assessments, and enterprise risk management.

Lacework Code Security expands coverage to full application lifecycle 

November 14: Cloud security firm Lacework has added the Code Security product to its infrastructure-as-code (IaC) suite to unify code and cloud security with the aim of allowing enterprises to innovate and deliver secure cloud-native applications with increased speed.

Lacework Code Security introduces two forms of static program analysis — software composition analysis (SCA) targeted at third-party code in customers' repositories, and static application security testing (SAST) targeting first-party code. The Lacework platform now encompasses code as it is written, infrastructure as code, containers, identity and entitlement management, and runtime across clouds.

Lacework added that customers will have access to always-up-to-date software bills of materials (SBOMs) for every application and continual visibility into their software supply chain, as well as an understanding of open-source license risk.

Palo Alto Networks updates Cortex XSIAM

November 13: Palo Alto Networks has announced Cortex XSIAM 2.0, an updated version of its existing product that now has a command center, MITRE ATT&CK Coverage Dashboard and bring your own ML (BYOML) among other updates.

The new features are:

• XSIAM Command Center: With a more user-friendly design, XSIAM Command Center offers a comprehensive overview of SOC operations, including visibility into all data sources being consumed by XSIAM, security alerts and incident information, such as the number of resolved or open security incidents.
• MITRE ATT&CK Coverage Dashboard: This is designed to allow mapping coverage directly to MITRE ATT&CK, providing detailed visibility of detection and prevention coverage across tactics and techniques into the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
• Bring your own ML: For organizations that want to build their own custom ML model, XSIAM ingests complete security data across hundreds of supported sources to enable better out-of-the-box AI/ML analytics. SOCs can use this to create and customize ML models as well as integrate their own models.
• Contextual in-product help assistant: Access to product help and documentation without the need to navigate out of the product.
• New security protection: Strengthen detection and protection coverage capabilities with new modules for early detection of threats targeting macOS ransomware, Kubernetes(K8s) and master boot records (MBRs).
• Network detection (NDR) coverage: Expand the network coverage of the endpoints with over 50 new detectors covering generic and specific protocol-based threat detection.
• Advanced Local Analysis for macOS and Linux: Provides enhanced coverage for local analysis of macOS and Linux file systems, leveraging ML models to provide accurate and adaptive responses to evolving threats.
• Free text search: A simplified search that enables analysts to query the entire security data set, without the need to craft specific XQL queries.
• New attack surface management (ASM) policies: New ASM policies added to the existing library of over 700 policies.

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To curb the cybersecurity incident, Microsoft is announcing a next-generation cybersecurity effort, called the Secure Future Initiative (SFI).

Microsoft is improving the built-in security of its products and platforms for users amidst the escalating cybersecurity threats. The new initiative will revolve around three pillars including AI-based cyber defences, advances in fundamental software engineering, and advocacy for stronger application of international norms.

To advance its threat intelligence of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC), Microsoft will be using AI to detect threats at a speed that is as fast as the internet itself. Microsoft is securing AI in its services based on its Responsible AI principles. Moreover, the tech giant will be building stronger AI-based protection for governments and countries.

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Apart from the AI capabilities, the tech platform will apply systematic processes to continuously integrate cybersecurity protection against emerging threat patterns as the engineers code, test, deploy, and operate systems and services. Moreover, customers will be enabled with more secure default settings for multifactor authentication (MFA). In addition to that, Microsoft plans to cut the time it takes to mitigate cloud vulnerabilities by 50%.

The start of the new security initiative comes as a response to the backlash received after a major breach that targeted its Azure platform.