Cyber Security Technologist Level 4 Higher Apprenticeship

Understands the basics of cyber security including:

·         Why cyber security matters – the importance to business and society

·         Basic theory – concepts such as security, identity, confidentiality, integrity, availability, threat, vulnerability, risk and hazard. Also how these relate to each other and lead to risk and harm

·         Security assurance – concepts (can explain what assurance is for in security, and ‘trustworthy’ versus ‘trusted’) and how assurance may be achieved in practice (can explain what penetration testing is and how it contributes to assurance; and extrinsic assurance methods)

·         How to build a security case – deriving security objectives with reasoned justification in a representative business scenario

·         Cyber security concepts applied to ICT infrastructure – can describe the fundamental building blocks and typical architectures and identify some common vulnerabilities in networks and systems.

·         Attack techniques and sources of threat – can describe the main types of common attack techniques; also the role of human behaviour. Explain how attack techniques combine with motive and opportunity to become a threat.

·         Cyber defence – describe ways to defend against attack techniques

·         Relevant laws and ethics – describe security standards, regulations and their consequences across at least two sectors; the role of criminal and other law; key relevant features of UK and international law

·         The existing threat landscape – can describe and know how to apply relevant techniques for horizon scanning including use of recognised sources of threat intelligence

Threat trends – can describe the significance of identified trends in cyber security and understand the value and risk of this analysis

In addition to the core units:

·         Understand the basic of networks: data, protocols and how they relate to each other; the main routing protocols; the main factors affecting network performance including typical failure modes in protocols and approaches to error control.

·         Understand at a deeper level than from Knowledge Module 1, how to build a security case: describe what good practice in design is; describe common security architectures; be aware of reputable security architectures that incorporates hardware and software components, and sources of architecture patterns and guidance. Understand how to build a security case including context, threats, justifying the selected mitigations and security controls with reasoning and recognising the dynamic and adaptable nature of threats.

·         Understand how cyber security technology components are typically deployed in networks and systems to provide security functionality including: hardware and software

·         Understand the basics of cryptography – can describe the main techniques, the significance of key management, appreciate the legal issues