Data Protection and Resilience

This unit examines practical controls and response strategies to protect data, accounts, devices, and remote work environments. Students will learn risk mitigation techniques—covering passwords, social engineering, cloud and mobile security, backups, and continuity planning—to prepare for incident recovery and more advanced defensive topics in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze common cyber threats and social engineering techniques (e.g., phishing, SIM swapping, interception) to identify vulnerabilities in user accounts, devices, cloud services, and third-party relationships
• Apply technical and procedural controls—including password best practices, multi-factor authentication, VPN usage, encryption, secure video conferencing, and cloud configuration—to harden systems and user access
• Demonstrate the ability to design and execute continuity and disaster recovery procedures, including inventorying backups, performing hard resets, restoring full system backups, and coordinating recovery for remote workforces
• Evaluate an organization’s overall security posture (physical, technical, and contractual) including vendor/third-party security, insurance, and regulatory considerations, and recommend prioritized improvements