Recap

We are past the middle of the semester, and honestly, I’m really enjoying this class. The work is thorough and engaging. Whether it’s the labs, discussion questions, or group activities, everything we do has helped me reinforce the concepts from the textbook in a meaningful way. I have also been pairing the lessons with Professor Meser's videos on YouTube to help study for my Security+ + exam, and that has been extremely helpful. So far, among the topics that we have covered, the three that stuck with me most were risk assessment, networking, and cryptography. 

Risk Assessment
I’ve learned that risk assessment is basically the foundation of cybersecurity — you can’t protect what you don’t understand. It’s all about identifying assets, spotting vulnerabilities, thinking through threats, and figuring out the impact if something goes wrong. I never realized how much strategy goes into just planning security before you even touch any tools.

Networking

Networking is definitely the backbone of cybersecurity. I’ve been learning how IP addressing, ports, and protocols (like TCP/IP ) work together to allow communication between systems and how weaknesses in these areas can lead to security issues. The Wireshark lab on packet sniffing was especially eye-opening. Being able to capture and analyze real-time network packets helped me clearly see how data travels across a network. It was both fascinating and a little concerning to realize how much information can be exposed in plain text if proper encryption isn’t used

Cryptography

Cryptography has been a challenging topic, but it’s also one of the most rewarding. I’ve learned how encryption, hashing, and digital signatures are used to protect data and confirm identity. The difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption took a little extra time for me to grasp, but going over it again is definitely helpful.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the semester and continuing to build on everything I’ve learned so far.