Preparing to Join our Master of Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence program? This guide may help you!

The most common question that I receive from candidates who are joining our Master of Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence Program (https://www.uoguelph.ca/computing/graduates-graduate-programs/master-cybersecurity-and-threat-intelligence-mcti) is how to prepare themselves for the program! When we assess applications, we are looking at many factors including past working experience in cybersecurity, performance in the undergraduate program, reference letters, etc. However, we know that it is not possible to find applicants that have all the required backgrounds for all our courses and it is totally fine - you are joining the program to learn, right?!

However, the following is my step-by-step guide that may help to cover gaps in your background before starting the program using freely available materials (feel free to skip any steps, this is not a comprehensive list and feel free to suggest any other materials in the comments section and usual disclaimer, this is only my personal opinion, has nothing to do with my employer, clients, etc.):

1- Take the beginner-level courses at: https://opensecuritytraining.info/Training.html ! I found opensecuritytraining courses as a great starting point for anyone in cybersecurity but I expect students to at least have beginner-level skills before joining our program (feel free to take their intermediate and advanced level courses too)!

2- Take the Offensive Security Metasploit Unleashed course (https://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/)! Hands down Offensive Security courses are among the very best in the market! However, the Metasploit Unleashed course is free so take it before joining the MCTI program!

3- Now you like to go more in-depth? Take Corelan Cybersecurity Research exploit development tutorials (https://www.corelan.be/index.php/2009/07/19/exploit-writing-tutorial-part-1-stack-based-overflows/). Really solid and interesting work!

As you might feel from the above discussion, you are going to join a very hands-on program but there are still fantastic books to look at as well (some are old but still worthy):

• Hacking the art of exploitation (https://github.com/intere/hacking)
• The shellcoders handbook (https://github.com/devzero2000/shellcoderhandbook)
• Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering (https://github.com/l34n/CySecBooks/blob/master/Reversing%20-%20Secrets%20Of%20Reverse%20Engineering%20(2005).pdf)
• Machine learning for cybersecurity cookbook (https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Machine-Learning-for-Cybersecurity-Cookbook)

Good luck with your cybersecurity journey and hope to see you all very soon!