Free Cybersecurity Training That’s Actually Worth Your Time

How to use it. Pick one course and one hands-on project, and finish both before starting anything else. Collecting courses feels like progress. Finishing them is progress.

1. Start from zero

• StashGrid Network+ roadmap: our own path through 21 hands-on networking lessons, from setting up a lab to reading packet captures. Every command was tested before publishing, and each stage lists the CompTIA Network+ exam areas it covers.
• IBM SkillsBuild: free courses from IBM in cybersecurity, cloud, data and AI, with learning paths and digital badges. Aimed at career starters and people switching careers.
• Top 50 Linux commands for beginners: a one-page reference to the commands you will type every day, grouped by job, with a downloadable PDF.
• Bash Guide: a clear, free guide to the Linux shell and simple scripting: variables, loops and functions. Scripting is what turns a ten-minute task into a ten-second one.

Nova: If you only do one thing from this page, set up a lab. Reading about security without touching it is like reading about swimming.

2. Courses with a certificate

• Cisco Networking Academy: Ethical Hacker: a free online course from Cisco covering how penetration testers plan, scan, test and report. It is a solid structured introduction to the offensive side, best taken after the networking basics.
• IBM SkillsBuild learning catalog: the full list of IBM's free courses, including cybersecurity fundamentals tracks that award digital badges you can add to LinkedIn.

A badge says you finished. A home lab says you can do it. Get both, but lead with the lab in interviews. — Nyx

3. Weekend projects (hands-on)

These give you something real to talk about: logs you searched, alerts you wrote, problems you found.

• Splunk projects for beginners: a free series of guided projects analyzing real log types in Splunk: DNS, HTTP, SSH, SMTP and DHCP. Each one teaches the search patterns SOC analysts use daily.
• Splunk SIEM home lab: the companion setup guide: install Splunk at home, feed it logs, and build alerts and dashboards like a SOC.
• Master DNS basics with Chris Greer: a short course on how DNS queries and answers work and how to troubleshoot them, from a well-known packet-analysis instructor.

Our own labs fit here too: your first Wireshark capture, syslog and SNMP monitoring, and what happens when you type a URL.

4. References the pros keep open

You don't read these cover to cover. You search them when a ticket or a lab sends you there.

• OWASP Web Security Testing Guide: the standard, free guide to testing web applications, organized from reconnaissance to reporting. If you work anywhere near websites, bookmark it.
• LOLBAS: a catalog of normal Windows programs that attackers misuse to stay hidden, with notes on how to detect each one. Very useful for defenders writing alerts.
• GTFOBins: the Linux equivalent: everyday Unix programs that can be abused to escalate privileges or escape restrictions. Defenders use it to see why a sudo rule is risky.
• SecLists: a large collection of wordlists and test inputs used in security testing. Useful in your own lab, and a sobering look at which passwords get guessed first.

Nova: LOLBAS and GTFOBins sound like attacker sites, but they're two of the most useful defender references there are. You can't spot misuse of a normal tool if you don't know how it gets misused.

Which path fits you?

• Help desk, aiming for a security role: the Network+ roadmap first, then the Splunk projects. Log searching is the skill most junior SOC job posts ask for.
• Curious about the attacker side: set up a lab, then take Cisco's Ethical Hacker course, and practise only on machines you own.
• Small-business IT, no security team: the Linux and Bash basics, then our free security tools page. Most of your wins will come from settings and tripwires, not from new software.

5. Keep these open while you learn

• Networking glossary: every term from our lessons in plain English.
• Common ports cheat sheet
• Nmap cheat sheet
• Free security tools worth installing: our companion toolkit page.
• Free practice labs: vulnerable-by-design labs sorted by skill.

How we pick

A resource makes this page if it is free to start, comes from a known organization or a well-maintained project, and teaches by doing rather than by slides alone. We leave out courses that are really sales funnels, anything that needs a credit card up front, and offensive material that isn't meant for your own lab. We review the page as courses change.

Nova and Nyx are StashGrid's AI hosts. This page was written with AI help and reviewed before publishing. Course details come from each provider's own page and can change, so check there before you enrol.