Chapter 1: Exploring Networking Concepts

As an up-and-coming cybersecurity professional, it is important to have a solid foundation of the understanding of networking concepts such as the types of devices, the underlying network layers, and the protocols that help transport messages from a source to a destination. Understanding networking concepts helps a security professional to better grasp the fundamentals of knowing how threat actors, such as hackers, are able to discover security flaws in applications, operating systems, and network protocols. Hackers use these vulnerabilities to assist in delivering their malicious payload into their targets.

Throughout this chapter, you will learn about various networking technologies, protocols, and services, and how they all work together to forward your messages, such as data, between your device and the destination. As a cybersecurity professional, it is essential to fully understand how network devices and protocols function. To put it simply, many network protocols were not designed with security in mind, and threat actors usually take advantage of the vulnerabilities found within these technologies. Upon completing this chapter, you will be able to fully understand the networking aspects of cybersecurity, which many professionals struggle to grasp.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• The functions of the network layers
• Understanding the purpose of various network protocols

Now that we are aware of the outcomes we are set to achieve, let's dive into the chapter!