By utilizing DevOps within your business you can improve productivity, planning, security, efficiency, and collaboration. On top of this, you can significantly decrease downtime, therefore limiting the impact on your revenue.

But DevOps can be a tricky subject to learn, and employees taking time away from the business to learn can cause disruption. However, online DevOps training courses are a convenient, affordable, and time-saving way to give your employees the skills they need for your business to implement DevOps.

What is DevOps?

DevOps combines development - “Dev” - and operations - “Ops”. It encourages collaboration between teams, so developers can work alongside operations to increase output and reduce lead times.

It encourages practices, tools, and processes to come together in tandem, minimizing delays and streamlining communication. As a result, this improved output is passed on to the customer.

DevOps may seem like it’s tricky to implement, but online DevOps training is the perfect way to introduce DevOps practices into your organization,

What is the goal of DevOps?

The goal of DevOps is simple: optimize processes to reduce friction and provide value to the customer.

To do this, there has to be a cultural shift within your business, in order to build, manage and optimize a continuous delivery pipeline. Your employees will also need to learn and utilize new skills.

By learning DevOps, it will enable your employees to:

• Decrease downtime
• Improve organization
• Streamline communication
• Improve the quality of work

What are the main benefits of DevOps for your business?

When employees learn new skills and processes that allow teams to synergize, the benefits to your organization are huge. Benefits of DevOps for your business include:

Faster processes

By working together in a continuous cycle, teams can evolve and innovate at a much faster rate. As a result, your business can produce work quickly by encouraging teams to take ownership.

DevOps also speeds up production cycles and introduces automation, which further improves the process.

Decreased costs

When processes improve and quality work is delivered quickly, it decreases costs and saves your business money.

Improved quality and reliability

Continuous delivery ensures that quality and reliability remain high, as the improved processes mean updates and changes can be developed, tested, and implemented much faster. With teams monitoring in real-time, performance is constantly tracked so any bugs can be fixed swiftly.

Identify issues early

Continuous monitoring ensures issues and potential problems can be identified quickly and shared widely so they can be fixed without causing delays.

Improved company culture

By continuously collaborating, your teams will improve their communication and trust in one another. By doing this there will be less downtime, fewer frustrations, and better productivity - and therefore an overall boost to company culture.

Attract and retain the best talent

By reducing friction and letting your teams deliver their best work, your business will attract and retain the best talent in your industry.

Improved security

Automated compliance policies ensure you adhere to security processes.

Encourages transparency

With better communication comes more clarity and transparency, and openness ensures there are no interruptions and unnecessary delays.

What does the continuous delivery pipeline enable?

The continuous delivery pipeline (CDP) allows businesses to restructure so they can provide constant output and therefore the most value for their customers. 

What training is required for DevOps?

DevOps isn’t something that employees can learn naturally or by themselves. It requires team members to commit so they can learn to work together and improve all aspects of the way they collaborate.

DevOps training should be undertaken by employees with prior experience in software engineering, operations, computer science, mathematics, or another similar field related to technology.

For those looking to pursue a career in DevOps, they should consider learning more about:

Cloud technology

• Software development
• System architecture

As well as technical knowledge, it’s also important for your business that DevOps engineers have skills and experience in other fields, such as communication, time management, teamwork, and leadership.

What is a DevOps practitioner?

DevOps practitioners differ from DevOps engineers, as practitioners specialize in the people side of collaboration, rather than the technical. They help to improve team culture, communication, processes, fixes, and updates, while not being directly involved with the technical aspects.

Is DevOps easy to learn?

For those with plenty of experience in development, DevOps shouldn’t be a difficult transition - it’s more or less a natural progression.

A common stumbling block is that every organization has a slightly different definition of what DevOps is. Therefore, learning DevOps from different perspectives and materials may cause initial confusion. Providing online course materials, such as those provided by Go1, ensures that all employees learn the same processes, which reduces the risk of misunderstandings.

However, those new to development and operations may find it more of a challenge - but far from impossible. Both experienced and inexperienced developers will still benefit greatly by studying DevOps training online - which of course will benefit your business in a multitude of ways.

Who can learn DevOps?

Anyone can learn DevOps, however, employees with experience in development and operations will find training far more accessible than those without.

In its most basic form, a DevOps engineer is somebody who understands both programming and operations. Therefore, studying DevOps assumes you know of at least one of these disciplines. But that’s not to say those without experience can’t take a DevOps course online; it just might take a little longer.

But that’s why online courses offer such a great way to learn. E-learning is completely self-directed, which means students can learn entirely at their own pace. And if your organization uses an LMS (learning management system), you’ll be able to identify which students require a little more support.

What would you benefit from learning before studying DevOps?

Employees would benefit from an understanding of some of the below before they begin learning DevOps:

• Basic operations processes
• Tech-stack
• Build and deployment processes
• An understanding of tools such as:
  undefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefined

Can a beginner learn DevOps?

While a beginner would gain a great deal by taking DevOps training, it is recommended that students have a basic understanding of programming in order to get the most from the materials. DevOps online training is available for beginners, but without existing knowledge, some course material may be too advanced for those with no prior experience.

How to start learning DevOps

DevOps can be tricky and time-consuming to learn, especially when trying to do so in and around daily role responsibilities. This is especially true when multiple employees need to learn, as it may not be feasible to take time away from the business to attend a course.

That’s why DevOps online training is so valuable to businesses. Online training is self-directed, meaning students can learn as and when it’s convenient for them. That means there’s no disruption to their role or the output of your business.

Can you learn DevOps in 1 month?

It would be incredibly difficult for a beginner to learn DevOps in one month, but it is possible for seasoned developers.

Those who have experience in programming, Linux, software development, and scripting already have plenty of knowledge, so a DevOps crash course should be challenging but completely possible.

To learn DevOps in a month will take dedication, even for experienced professionals. But, it’s certainly achievable. For those not able to dedicate a prolonged period to learning, a slightly less ambitious timeline for learning would be around four to six months.

What is a DevOps course?

A DevOps training course will teach students the fundamentals of DevOps, and how to introduce new practices and structures to their ways of working.

Modules for learning DevOps include:

• Git
• Workflows
• Integration
• Testing
• Framework
• Containerization
• Networking
• Cluster architecture

What are the best courses to learn DevOps?

DevOps courses range from beginner through to advanced and can teach students the fundamentals of DevOps, or thoroughly explore a specific topic. The best DevOps training will provide course material in multiple formats, to ensure students who learn under different styles can retain information.

Beginners DevOps courses

DevOps training for beginners include:

• DevOps Fundamentals, Part 1 of 2: Get Started
• Jenkins With DevOps For Developers
• Dive Into Ansible - From Beginner to Expert in Ansible

Professional DevOps courses

More intermediate and advanced DevOps engineer training include:

• DevOps with Azure
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
• DevOps: CI/CD with Jenkins pipelines, Maven, Gradle
• Docker for DevOps
• Deploy Applications with Azure DevOps
• AZ-400 Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions

Looking for DevOps training courses?

Is your business ready to improve processes and productivity by embracing DevOps? Go1 has a range of DevOps courses available for beginner and advanced students. Book a demo with our team today for more information.

A cyber attack can have devastating consequences, whether it’s denial of service, stolen information, or stolen money: all equate to a loss of revenue in one way or another.

Any business is a potential target for malicious cyber activity, even if it’s not apparent that your site has anything you may consider valuable if it were in the hands of cyber-criminals. However, it’s important that preventative measures are put in place so criminals aren’t given the chance to find out - and that entails more than you might expect.

To maximize your chances of preventing an attack and improving security, a cyber security course would benefit your employees and your business.

What is cyber security?

Cyber security is the way in which an organization applies processes, controls, learnings, and technology to protect digital assets. This includes:

• Data
• Networks
• Systems
• Programs
• Devices

Not only does this protect the business, but also clients and customers of the business who may have data stored digitally. By not protecting themselves from a potential attack, and risking data falling into the hands of criminals, a business can damage its reputation. Not only that but there can potentially be legal consequences and fines as well.

Cyber security can be categorized as:

• Information security, which helps protect data and therefore privacy
• Network security, which protects networks from malware or cyber attacks
• Application security, which protects devices and software
• Operational security, which focuses on the processes for protecting data assets
• Disaster recovery, which is the process of regaining control following an attack

There’s also a sixth category: end-user security, and training helps to inform users of the potential dangers posed by malicious software and attackers. This is where courses for cyber security play such an important role in an organization’s security efforts.

Why is cyber security important?

As we’ve already highlighted, there’s no reason why you should assume your business is immune from cyber attacks. While you may feel your business has nothing to offer an attacker, those attacked are rarely targeted specifically.

Cyber attacks are often done by viruses or automated systems, which look to exploit weaknesses in your security. This can be anything from your firewall to under-educated employees within your business. This is why cyber security is important to learn for everyone, not just those in cyber security or IT. Any team member using a computer should be taught the importance of remaining vigilant, and the common signs of a cyber attack.

Cyber attacks are always evolving

Like all aspects of technology, the tactics and programs involved in cyber attacks are constantly evolving and improving. While the systems, processes and training your business has in place now may be sufficient, they may not be this time next year.

Recovery costs are rising

The cost of recovering systems, networks, and data can be expensive and time-consuming. There is also the risk of fines should you not be sufficiently protecting your data . Ransomware attacks are also on the increase, which effectively holds your systems hostage until the attackers are paid - and even then, they may not allow you to recover your systems easily, if at all.

Why cyber security is important for businesses

We’ve already considered some of the reasons why cyber security is important for businesses, however there are several more key reasons:

• Protect the future of your business - by failing to prepare for a cyber attack, not only do you face the possibility of a fine, but also a loss of revenue due to the impact on your reputation
• Protect your customers - you have a legal obligation to protect the privacy of your customers, as well as a moral obligation
• Work safely and confidently - with the right training and protective measures in place you can be confident that you’re limiting the risk of a malicious attack on your business
• Protect systems and productivity - not only can attacks and viruses steal data and limit access to your own networks, but also slow down and even damage your hardware, potentially irreversibly
• Keep your website online - one of the most common types of cyber attack is a DDoS, which can cause your website to go offline and therefore result in lost revenue
• Protect from adware and spyware - not all cyber attacks are major, and if left unnoticed and unchecked certain malicious programs can sit buried in your systems for months or even years

You don’t need to be a computer engineer to have a good understanding of cyber security. A computer security course, and frequent refresher training, should be all it takes to protect your business and your customers.

Is cyber security hard?

We’ve already covered how important it is for all employees in your organization to receive regular training on cyber security. But for employees who have little experience with technology, is cyber security hard or confusing to learn?

The short answer is “no”. While certain aspects of cyber security are complex and reserved for those in IT, there is still plenty that inexperienced users can learn to ensure they’re given adequate knowledge to keep themselves and their business safe.

Cyber security training is available for those with varying backgrounds and understandings of computers and technology. For example, cyber security for beginners will explore how users can remain vigilant online, while training for professionals will explore much more complex topics such as network security and disaster recovery.

How to learn cyber security

There are several ways employees can learn more about cyber security:

• Training and conferences - a good way to learn and network, but can be expensive and difficult to find time to attend, especially for larger teams
• Books - this can be a useful introduction to cyber security, however as cybercrime quickly evolves the information can soon become outdated
• Internet research - there are plenty of blogs and websites that cover aspects of cyber security
• Ethical hacking - Not one for beginners, but ethical hacking allows users to see how threats can occur from the other side

If you’re looking for the ideal solution for how you or your employees can learn cyber security, online courses may be an ideal solution.

What is a cyber security course?

A cyber security course will teach employees how to stay safe online and how to spot signs of malicious activity.

Topics that are covered in top cyber security courses include:

• Virus protection
• Phishing
• DDoS attacks
• Malware and adware
• Authentication
• Firewalls
• Encryption

Where to learn cyber security

Not everyone works in a role that requires a deep understanding of cyber security, but a basic understanding is imperative for every employee. Because of this, your business may not be able to justify expensive training or afford employees a long absence from their duties.

However, online cyber security training offers employees of all levels the chance to learn, while being cost-effective and not disturbing day-to-day operations. Online courses are intended to be accessible for everyone, and can be done during periods of downtime in short bursts, and whenever or wherever is convenient.

What is the best course for cyber security?

The best cyber security training courses depend on the role and existing level of knowledge of employees. A beginners’ course is ideal for those with no knowledge, but will also provide effective refresher training for those who have some knowledge, but don’t work specifically in an IT role.

Of course, IT professionals and those who work in cyber security will look to take more intermediate or advanced courses.

Courses for those with knowledge or interest in cyber security include:

• Comprehensive Cyber Security Training for UK Financial Institutions
• Cybersecurity Toolkit: Data Privacy
• Ethical Hacking: Cryptography for Hackers

What are the best cyber security courses for beginners?

A cyber security course for beginners will introduce students to the basics of online safety. They’ll be equipped with enough knowledge not to be overwhelmed, but put them in the best position possible to be aware of threats.

Some of the best cyber security courses for beginners include:

• Introduction to cyber security
• Understanding cyber security
• Cyber security awareness

How to balance learning cyber security while working

One of the major advantages of online cyber security courses is the freedom students have.. Online courses are self-directed, so students can learn as and when it fits into their own schedules.

All students will have access to the same materials, guaranteeing consistent learning. That means everyone learns the same while not interrupting their day-to-day responsibilities.

FAQ

Should employees of all levels take cyber security training?

Yes, anyone who uses a computer should have a basic understanding of cyber security in order to protect employees and your business from potential threats.

How long does an online cyber security course take?

It depends on the level of training. A beginners course which introduces students to the basics can take as little as a few hours - which can be spread out over as long as the student needs.

Advanced courses and certifications will take longer, so it’s important to dedicate time to learning more in-depth topics.

How to study cyber security

For more info on how to take cyber security courses online check out Go1 and book a demo today.