Every alert a SOC analyst investigates is, at some level, a story about systems talking to each other and someone trying to abuse that conversation. To read that story you need the basics of how networks work and what security is actually trying to protect. This module gives you that foundation before you touch any security tooling.
You'll start with the CIA triad, the three goals of confidentiality, integrity, and availability that every security control maps back to. Then you'll move into the OSI and TCP/IP models, IP addressing and subnetting, and the ports and protocols that carry everyday traffic. Finally, you'll see how firewalls, IDS, and IPS filter and monitor that traffic, and why a SOC needs more than one layer of defence.
Once you're comfortable here, move on to Operating Systems & Command Line to get hands-on with the Windows and Linux machines these networks connect.
The three core goals of security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and how they act as a checklist for judging any security control or incident.
A walkthrough of the seven OSI layers and what each one does, giving you a shared vocabulary for describing where in the stack traffic or an attack sits.
How TCP/IP addressing works, what a subnet mask does, and how to tell which part of an IP address identifies the network and which identifies the host.
What ports are, how they pair with IP addresses to reach a specific service, the well-known port ranges, and how to view active connections with netstat.