Book Image

Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate 200-201 Certification Guide

By : Glen D. Singh
Book Image

Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate 200-201 Certification Guide

By: Glen D. Singh

Overview of this book

Achieving the Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate 200-201 certification helps you to kickstart your career in cybersecurity operations. This book offers up-to-date coverage of 200-201 exam resources to fully equip you to pass on your first attempt. The book covers the essentials of network security concepts and shows you how to perform security threat monitoring. You'll begin by gaining an in-depth understanding of cryptography and exploring the methodology for performing both host and network-based intrusion analysis. Next, you'll learn about the importance of implementing security management and incident response strategies in an enterprise organization. As you advance, you'll see why implementing defenses is necessary by taking an in-depth approach, and then perform security monitoring and packet analysis on a network. You'll also discover the need for computer forensics and get to grips with the components used to identify network intrusions. Finally, the book will not only help you to learn the theory but also enable you to gain much-needed practical experience for the cybersecurity industry. By the end of this Cisco cybersecurity book, you'll have covered everything you need to pass the Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate 200-201 certification exam, and have a handy, on-the-job desktop reference guide.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Section 1: Network and Security Concepts
5
Section 2: Principles of Security Monitoring
9
Section 3: Host and Network-Based Analysis
14
Section 4: Security Policies and Procedures
21
Chapter 17: Mock Exam 1
22
Chapter 18: Mock Exam 2

Exploring symmetric encryption algorithms

There are two types of encryption algorithms that are used to encrypt data. These are symmetric and asymmetric algorithms. In this section, we will take a deep dive into exploring the functions and operations of symmetric encryption algorithms.

To encrypt a plaintext message, both a cipher and a key are required. In symmetric encryption, a key is used to encrypt the plaintext message into ciphertext and the same key is used to decrypt the ciphertext back to plaintext.

While symmetric encryption algorithms are commonly used in many systems, the major downside is that if the secret key is lost or stolen, the ciphertext is susceptible to compromise. If an attacker is able to retrieve the key, the threat actor will be able to decipher the message and view the contents. Therefore, it's extremely important that the key is kept safe at all times.

Symmetric algorithms use key lengths that range from 40 bits to 256 bits. These key lengths...