Prior to taking this course, students should understand operating systems and networking principles.

You can take this course on Windows, Macintosh, or Unix platforms.

Whenever you see this graphic within the course, an applet explains or dissects some element of network security and firewalls.
Move your mouse cursor over the elements of the image outlined in red to display pop-up explanations.

A SlideShow presents a series of images you can flip through, either forward or backward.
In this course, slideshows will be used to explain concepts related to network security and firewalls.

Throughout this course, you'll have the opportunity to review definitions of key terms.
These terms are defined in the course glossary. The terms appear as blue, italicized, and underlined in the lesson text. Clicking a glossary term opens a pop-up window with the definition. To get a feel for how it works, try clicking the word glossary now.

Network security consists of

1. the provisions made in an underlying computer network infrastructure,
2. policies adopted by the network administrator to protect the network,
3. and the network-accessible resources

from unauthorized access and continuous monitoring.

Network security consists of

1. the provisions made in an underlying computer network infrastructure,
2. policies adopted by the network administrator to protect the network and
3. the network-accessible resources from unauthorized access, and
4. the effectiveness (or lack) of these measures combined together.

Distributednetworks are

1. based on autonomous entities,
2. can be integrated with other types of network elements, and
3. are more robust than centralized networks.

For better utilization of an intelligent network, this kind of heterogeneous setup requires a unified IP-based management.