Practical Privacy, Backup, and Recovery

This capstone unit consolidates defensive cybersecurity skills focused on privacy, resilient data management, and response to emerging social and technical threats. Students build on foundational principles to apply secure device/network practices, robust backup and recovery strategies, and critical evaluation of deepfakes, malvertising, and social engineering in real-world scenarios.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze both malicious and nonmalicious threats (e.g., trackers, faulty updates, maintenance issues, and social engineering) to personal and organizational devices and data and prioritize mitigations based on risk
• Apply secure configuration and usage practices for networks and devices, including safe smart device settings, public Wi‑Fi protections, sharing controls, and encryption of sensitive communications and backups
• Demonstrate implementation of a comprehensive backup and recovery plan by selecting appropriate backup types, encrypting backups, excluding/including files, testing restorations (to original and alternate locations), and following safe backup handling procedures
• Evaluate emerging content- and identity-based threats (e.g., deepfakes, virtual kidnappings, fake news, malvertising, and MFA weaknesses) and formulate incident response and recovery actions, including when to engage professionals and how to recover financial losses from third parties