Welcome: Dr. Tahseen Al-Doori's Cyber Security Essentials

What you'll be able to do

By the end of this lesson you will be able to describe who wrote the book this course is built on, how the course follows its six units, and why some guidance has been updated for 2026.

• Name the author and the book, and explain what the book sets out to do.
• Find your way around the course: lessons, checkpoints and capstones.
• Explain what a "From the Book to 2026" section is, and why it exists.

Meet the Author and His Book

This course is built on Cyber Security Essentials by Dr. Tahseen Al-Doori, B.Eng (Hons), M.Sc., PGCE, Ph.D., FBCS. Everything you study here follows his book: its order, its units and its way of thinking about security.

Dr. Al-Doori wrote the book for university and college students who are meeting cyber security for the first time. It assumes no technical background at all. Its goal is not to hand you a list of do's and don'ts. Instead, it sets out to show you why attacks work and how they are carried out, so that you can defend yourself and explain it to the people around you. That idea runs through every lesson in this course: when you understand how an attack works, you can recognise a new version of it that no checklist has caught up with yet.

The book's second edition (2026) keeps every chapter of the first edition and arranges its 21 chapters into six teaching units. Each chapter ends with a key takeaway and a short summary, and the book closes with a glossary. This course adds what a printed book cannot: practice scenarios, knowledge checks, videos, hands-on tasks and up-to-date sources.

The Book's Six-Unit Arc

Dr. Al-Doori's six units follow a single arc: first, how the digital world works; then how people are attacked; then how machines are attacked; how to defend both; and finally, how investigators reconstruct what happened. The course keeps his order exactly. After this Orientation, each of the next six modules is one unit of his book, and the course ends with a Capstone.

• Unit I — The Security Mindset (Chapters 1–2). Why nobody is "un-hackable", the core vocabulary of security, and two true stories: the hacking of journalist Mat Honan and the Stuxnet attack.
• Unit II — How the Digital World Works (Chapters 3–6). How the Internet moves data, how email travels, how the web works and how Wi-Fi connects you. Every threat later in the course abuses something you learn here.
• Unit III — The Human Attack Surface (Chapters 7–8). How people are manipulated through email and social media. The course extends this to scam texts, phone calls, QR codes and AI-enabled impersonation.
• Unit IV — Authentication (Chapters 9–12). How logins work, how passwords are stolen and how to manage them. The course adds multi-factor authentication, passkeys and account recovery.
• Unit V — Machines and Networks Under Attack (Chapters 13–20). Malware, layered defenses, safe browsing and Wi-Fi threats. This is the book's largest unit, so the course splits it into three sections: 5A Malware, 5B Protecting Your Devices and 5C Safe Connections.
• Unit VI — Evidence and Investigation (Chapter 21). Cyber forensics: where digital evidence hides and how it is preserved. The course adds what to do when your own account is hacked and how to report a scam or a data breach.

Every lesson tells you which chapter it follows, so you can always connect what you are learning back to the book.

Why Some Guidance Has Been Updated for 2026

Security guidance evolves. New attacks appear, new platforms take over and new standards are published. A book's foundations can stay sound while some of its practical advice needs refreshing, and that is exactly the situation here.

The book's core ideas are as useful as ever: security is relative, attackers usually go after people rather than machines, and every protection is about confidentiality, integrity and availability. Its two case studies, from 2010 and 2012, still teach their lessons well. What has moved on is the detail around them. Three examples you will meet later:

• Passwords. The current US standard for authentication, NIST SP 800-63B-4 (final in July 2025), favours long passwords and says services should not force you to mix symbols and character types.
• Passkeys. A way of signing in without a password at all. In April 2026 the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said passkeys are the future and encouraged people to use them where offered.
• Devices. Most people now go online mainly through their phones. In StatCounter's September 2026 figures, Android is the most-used operating system worldwide across all devices.

So that you always see both the book's teaching and today's practice, many lessons include a section called From the Book to 2026. It follows the same four steps every time: what the book teaches, why that made sense, what has changed since, and what to do now, with the official source that supports the update. The book is the starting point; the 2026 section shows how the guidance has evolved from it.

How This Course Works

Lessons. Each lesson opens with a "Where you are" note and a short list of what you will be able to do. Then come the teaching sections, a real-world example and, in many lessons, the From the Book to 2026 section. Some lessons include a short video. The video is a complement: every lesson is complete without it. Each lesson ends with a "What Would You Do?" scenario, a short knowledge check with explained answers, key takeaways and the sources behind every fact.

Checkpoints. At the end of each unit, a checkpoint gives you three realistic scenarios. You choose what to do, then compare your choice with a model answer. Checkpoints test judgment, not memory.

Capstones. The course ends with two projects and a final assessment. Capstone A is a private audit of your own accounts and devices. You will repeat the self-check from the next lesson and compare "before" with "after". Capstone B is a beginner forensics case built from an entirely fictional incident. The final assessment has 20 scenario-based questions.

The whole course takes roughly 14 hours, at your own pace.

Privacy and Ethics

Two rules apply throughout. First, privacy: some activities ask you to check your own accounts and devices. You always do this privately, on your own device. No activity, quiz, self-check or capstone will ever ask you to share a real password, recovery code, MFA secret or QR code, a personal email address, phone number, account name, home IP address, router login, a screenshot of your accounts, or private messages or files. If anything is ever asked for, it is only a completion confirmation, redacted observations, a risk level and your action plan.

Second, ethics: this course teaches defense, and some lessons explain how attacks and investigations work. Only inspect, test or change devices, accounts and systems you own or are explicitly authorized to work with.

Real-World Example

Here is a preview of one of the book's case studies. In August 2012, attackers took over journalist Mat Honan's online accounts one after another. They did not crack a single password. They phoned customer support, pretended to be him and used scraps of his personal information to pass identity checks. They then used his Apple account to remotely wipe his iPhone, iPad and MacBook. He later wrote that their real goal was his short Twitter username.

Dr. Al-Doori uses this story to show that one attack can damage confidentiality, integrity and availability all at once. You will take the whole chain apart in Lesson 1.3, and find the single changes that could have broken it.

What Would You Do?

Before you move on, take one minute to reflect privately. If an attacker wanted to get into your digital life, which single account would they go after first, and why? You do not need to write the answer down or share it. Keep it in mind: by the end of Unit IV you will know exactly how to protect that account.

Knowledge Check

There is no quiz in this orientation lesson. Your first check, a private self-check, comes in the next lesson.

Key Takeaways

• This course is built on Cyber Security Essentials by Dr. Tahseen Al-Doori, B.Eng (Hons), M.Sc., PGCE, Ph.D., FBCS, and follows his six units in his order.
• The book's aim, and this course's, is to understand why and how attacks work, not to memorise rules.
• Security guidance evolves. "From the Book to 2026" sections start from the book's teaching and show how current guidance has developed from it.
• Personal checks are always private. Only inspect, test or change what you own or are explicitly authorized to work with.

Sources

• Dr. Tahseen Al-Doori — Cyber Security Essentials (Second Edition, 2026), About This Edition and Contents
• NIST — SP 800-63B-4, Digital Identity Guidelines: Authentication and Authenticator Management
• UK National Cyber Security Centre — Leave passwords in the past: passkeys are the future (April 2026)
• StatCounter Global Stats — Operating System Market Share Worldwide (September 2026 data)
• Mat Honan, repost of his August 2012 Wired account — seclists.org
• PBS NewsHour — Tips From Mat Honan After the Hack That Brought Down His Cloud (2012)