Study at Stanford Online: Advanced Cybersecurity
Admission
It's simple – we purchase the required number of courses (6 out of 7 for “admission” to the program, or a smaller number of courses if a certificate for the program is not needed). The cost of one course is 545 USD. I was unable to register for the program/course using a foreign card indicating an address in the Russian Federation, I had to randomly write an address from the UAE. After payment, we get access to the online learning platform with materials. There are no requirements for knowledge or the need to take preliminary courses.
Education
The program consists of:
one compulsory course – Foundations of Information Security
6 additional courses, 5 of which you must choose to take if you want to receive a Certificate of Achievement for the program. What other documents you can get are described Here.
Here is a list of additional courses in the program:
In the online learning platform, we see our progress for each course (what topic and what moment of the video we stopped at last time). While watching video lectures, we can switch between one of two options of auxiliary content:
display of slides on the topic of the lecture – slides are scrolled automatically in accordance with what is currently on the video;
full text of what is said in the video – the current phrase/sentence spoken in the video is highlighted in the text.
Each course has sections, at the end of which you need to pass an intermediate test. The final test, consisting of 20 multiple-choice questions, is only unlocked after completing all sections and passing the intermediate tests. There is no limit on the number of attempts to pass the final test, so if you fail to answer 85% of the questions correctly, you can try again. In addition to testing and video lectures, there are 3 more types of training resources:
video interviews with representatives of well-known companies (for example, LinkedIn) on cybersecurity issues and problems;
text documents describing some known cyber attacks, details of their investigation;
a virtual lab where you can write code that exploits vulnerabilities.
A full slide presentation with the content of the key points of the course can be downloaded at the very beginning of the training.
Peculiarities
Completing each course gives you a certain amount of CEUs (what is this written here), which, in my opinion, you cannot use usefully in any way – it is simply quantitative confirmation (1 CEU = 10 hours) that you have gone through something and developed yourself.
After passing the final test for each course, you will receive a “Record of Completion”:
Record of Completion
Additionally, all successfully completed courses are added to one common paper “Record of Completion”:
General Record of Completion The Record of Completion for individual courses, as well as the final certificate for the program, can be shared via the link.
Each course of the program, whether it is separate or part of the program, provides the opportunity to download all lecture slides in PDF.
For online learning participants, in-person events are sometimes held, for example this one in 2024: ConnectED2024
They may provide an invitation letter on university letterhead, but there will be no sponsorship/other assistance in obtaining a visa.
Opinion
Is the course useful?
From the point of view of gaining new knowledge – yes, but with reservations:
not entirely up-to-date information – the slides of some lectures are dated 2017/2019, however, according to the information provided, it seemed that 2014 had crept in somewhere;
lack of opportunity to communicate with teachers;
not suitable if cybersecurity is your main activity;
In terms of the correctness of investing in myself – I don't feel it, rather not. There were only 2 approaches to me from employers thanks to these courses. It is important to note that the knowledge I gained at work was not the basis for me, but an addition to my main profession in the field of QA, and they sought me not only for this knowledge, but for the corresponding QA experience (my linkedin), seasoned with employer-relevant cybersecurity knowledge gained.
Would I recommend these courses or the entire program to friends/colleagues?
For this money – no. Obviously, there are more valuable and specialized ones. certificates.
However, overall, the impressions are positive. Probably because the topic was interesting to me and they provide an opportunity for face-to-face networking in the USA.
