Cryptography Courses

 

Cryptography Courses & Training

The importance of Cryptography in today’s world is simply immense for without it nothing much at all would be safe from the probing of criminal hackers and rogue nations alike.

It works by encrypting data, which can only then be decrypted if the correct decryption key is known.  Algorithms and cyphers are often used to encrypt sensitive data which, in an increasingly insecure world, often means pretty well all data! Due to the huge demand for data encryption, cryptography courses are available to provide relevant training for all those staff working in information and cyber security environments, where the protection of information is of paramount importance.

Training courses in cryptography will often include real world examples for students to learn lessons from too. In this way, course content can be made more applicable to the daily working lives of those tasked with protecting their organisations data from prying eyes. Learning from the mistakes of others will also often prove to be a real eye opener!

There are various levels of data encryption; these are dependant upon key sizes which are currently often 64, 128, 192 or 256 bits. The higher levels, from 128 bit, conform to the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). This standard is generally adopted across the globe, so it has by default become the global set of standards for data encryption.

 

Cryptography and BlockChain related Courses

The world of ‘Crypto’ has also hit the headlines recently due to the rise of Bitcoin, and the BlockChain technology that it is based upon. Many students have been drawn to the subject because of this, which has resulted in a plethora of new courses too. Some of these new cryptography focused training modules also cover the implications of introducing BlockChain technology outside of crypto-currencies and into transactional processing. This is occurring right now, first of all for the banks and financial services providers and will then potentially spread out to other types of transactional processing too. BlockChain is very secure due to continuously growing lists of records, these are the blocks that make up the blockchain, and these are all linked and secured using cryptography.

 

Who are Cryptography Courses suitable for?

Courses in Cryptography are suitable for a multitude of information security professionals including Cryptographers and Cryptanalysts, Vulnerability Assessors and Security Auditors plus senior managers such as CIO’s, CTO’s, CISO’s and even CEO’s with a technical bent working in technically complex organisations.

Cryptographers and Cryptanalysts and other InfoSec professionals will need to learn about today’s real world cryptographic security systems and any related algorithms. They will ultimately be responsible for designing the most robust and secure systems possible, reducing as far as they can any vulnerability to penetration or hacking.

 

Cryptography Classroom Training Courses

Students attending courses in Cryptography need to be educated to the level necessary for them to carry out their job role effectively.

Training is available from foundation level through technical and implementation levels up to levels more suited to Security Architects planning implementations across organisations.

Each student of information security will have different skills gaps and individual training needs, they must identify and attend courses that are best suited to these requirements.

Next, we’ll take a quick look at some of the general course options available in Cryptography.

 

1) Cryptography training courses

In the world of Cryptography, Ciphers are defined as ‘a secret or disguised way of writing; a code’, this sounds great but what does it mean? In cryptography, a cipher is basically an algorithm that performs encryption or decryption.

Course modules on Cyphers should include the following course content:

1. An introduction to Cryptography
2. A history of Cryptography
3. Discrete Probability
4. The one-time pad, theoretically secure cryptosystem
5. Real-world stream cyphers
6. Pseudo Random Generators and Stream Cyphers
7. Example attacks on the one-time-pad and stream cyphers
8. Semantic security relationships, are stream cyphers semantically secure?
9. Pseudorandom generator (PRG) definitions
10. Data Encryption standards
11. AES block cyphers
12. Creating block cyphers using PRG’s
13. PRF (Pseudorandom Function) family
14. One time keys and many time keys for CPA (Commercial Product Assurance) certified products

 

2) Advanced Cryptography training courses

Students that wish to study advanced cryptography must have a good grounding and overall understanding of the subject first. Practical experience of using cyphers in the real world will also help! This subject is not for everyone; it is for information security professionals that need to improve their already considerable knowledge of the subject.

 

Advanced Cryptography course should include the following main course content elements:

1. Data Integrity introduction
2. MAC (Message Authentication Code) keys
3. MAC’s that are base on PRF’s
4. Specific CBC (Cypher Block Chaining) MAC, NMAC and HMAC, MAC padding, PMAC and Carter-Wegman MAC
5. Constructing Compression Functions in information security
6. Timing attacks related to MAC verification
7. Ciphertext attack methods
8. Reconstructing data from Cyphers and MACS
9. CBC Padding attack methods
10. Non-Atomic decryption
11. Cipher Key derivation and deterministic encryption
12. Format preserving encryption techniques
13. Diffie-Hellman protocol, Fermat and Euler
14. Merkle and the Merkle-Damgard paradigm (No, not Angela!)
15. Introduction to Public-Key encryption
16. Number theory and arithmetic algorithms
17. CCA (Chosen Ciphertext Attacks)
18. RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adelman) algorithms

So there you have it, there is an awful lot of information to digest here and many of these courses can literally take weeks to complete. If you succeed in qualifying from them, you can call yourself a graduate of cryptography and should find many interesting career opportunities will open up for you. Good luck!