Starting the CYSA

Welcome!

This is the first of a series of posts on my journey to pass the CompTIA CySA+. I plan on taking my time and working through the material at a slow place. Sure, I could cram and pass the test in a few weeks… but would the certificate have any value if I lacked any of the knowledge associated with it?

These posts will focus on me completing the various lab excercises in this book CompTIA CySA+ Study Guide If you are using these posts as a guide to your own studies, I will assume that you have fundamental knowledge about networking, virtual machines and security.

I will also add a glossary of terms and some miscellaneous cloud/security/IT ramblings. Who knows what could happen?

Lab Setup

Here is a diagram of the initial virtual environment I will be using. This will change. I have setup a Nat Network of 10.0.2.0/24 within VirtualBox, this will place the VMs on their own segmented network while still being NAT’d out to my real network. Refer to the VirtualBox documentation here for setting up a NAT network.

Lab Diagram

Required Software

Here are links for the main components of this architecture setup. Keep mind this can also be run on VMWare, HyperV or in your own closet.

VirtualBox - Type 2 Hypervisor software.
Kali Linux VirtualBox Image - Some kind of Linux security people use.
Metasploitable - An intentionally vulnerable Linux virtual machine.
Windows Server 2019 - For testing Windows vulnerabilities.

Thats it. Now off we go.