Y

Security fundamentals · Beginner · 6 h

Protecting data

The CIA triad and threat thinking, why fast hashes are wrong for passwords, authenticated encryption for sensitive fields, and handling secrets and keys.

Why employers care: Storing passwords, keys and personal data correctly is a baseline expectation for every engineer, and a frequent interview topic for security, DevOps and backend roles.

In the roadmaps for: DevOps / Platform Engineer, Cloud and Network Engineer, Cybersecurity Engineer, Blockchain Developer

Lessons, in order

  1. Why passwords need slow hashesMeasure how fast an attacker can guess against SHA-256 and against Argon2id, and learn what to store instead of passwords.4 min
  2. Encrypting sensitive fields and managing secretsEncrypt a sensitive field with authenticated encryption, see tampering and wrong keys rejected, and keep keys out of code.3 min