I have learned a lot of informative information in this class. From reading the book to doing the actual virtual assigned labs. The labs were very detailed which made is very interesting to work on them. Completing the class labs made the book make a lot more sense because I was able to do the actual hands on part with the labs on the virtual network. One interesting thing I learned taking this class was about the CAC card that I thought was just a very simple access card, but taking this class Dr. Powell broke it down into sections of how it works. I also worked on Linux and have a better understanding of the operating system.
The Common Access Card, usually known as the CAC card, is a smart card about the size of a credit card. This card is the standard identification for United States Department of Defense (DoD) civilian employees, active-duty military personnel, Selected Reserve, and eligible contractor personnel. The CAC is designed to provide two factors of authentication; what the user has which is the physical card, and what the user and only the user themselves know which is the pin/password. It's also the principal card that’s used to enable physical access to buildings and controlled spaces, and it also provides access to defense computer systems and networks. The integrated circuit chip (ICC) which is the the little gold chip that is usually located at the bottom of the card contains information about the owner, including the PIN and one or more PKI digital certificates. The ICC comes in different capacities, with the most recent versions issued at 64 and 144 kilobytes (KB).
One of the very first parts of the book and the virtual labs are focusing on the Active Directory Domain Controllers. Before I started to work on the lab I knew a little about the domain controllers and what it is used for. Working on the lab itself made me not only learn about it but I picked it up quickly because it broke it down as to what I was doing and why I was making these changes on the Domain Controller. The domain controller is a server on a Microsoft Windows or Windows NT network that is responsible for allowing host access to Windows domain resources. The domain controllers in a network are the centerpiece of an Active Directory directory service. It stores user account information, authenticates users and enforces security policy for a Windows domain. You usually will add a domain controller to your network when you decide that it is cost effective for your organization to have the unified system of credentials, users, groups, and permissions that an Active Directory domain provides, in addition to the machine and user policies provided by Group Policy. Some of the benefits are that you can control a number of machine and user settings centrally, and users can log onto any machine in the network with one username and password.
Working on the GPO's were pretty easy due to they did break it down, but I finally learned where all of those policy settings are located and how to apply them to different users and groups. I actually had no idea that it was as many policies as it was in the Group Policy Management Editor. One of the topics that lab covered was changing the login hours for a user. This was a fly by process it took a matter of seconds to change these settings. We had to click a checkbox to make sure it was enabled and made sure that there was a time in the time slot. All of these settings fall under the Microsoft Active Directory.
Microsoft Active Directory allows you to use group policies to define user or computer settings for an entire group of users or computers at one time. The settings that you configure are stored in a Group Policy Object (GPO), which is then associated with Active Directory objects such as sites, domains, or organizational units. Group policies cover many different aspects of the network, desktop, and software configuration environment. They consist of the following an Application deployment policy and these policies assign or publish applications to users or computers, and affect the applications that users access on the network. Next is the File deployment which allows an administrator to place files in special folders on the user's computer, such as the desktop or My Documents areas. Also Using a script policy, an administrator can specify scripts that should run at specific times, such as login/logout or system start up/shutdown. While administrators can use software policies to globally configure most of the settings in user profiles, such as desktop settings, Start menu options, and applications. Then the last one is Security policies which allows an administrator to restrict user access to files and folders, configure how many failed login attempts will lock an account, and control user rights.
Microsoft has also released a tool to make changes to Group Policy called Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM). This tool is available for any organization that has licensed the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). This advanced tool allows administrators to have a check in/out process for modification Group Policy Objects, track changes to Group Policy Objects, and implement approval workflows for changes to Group Policy Objects.

Working on Linux is always very different. I am not a fan of using Linux at all but it could be because of how it was taught to me. Working on Linux in this lab were not complicated at all. The lab had me to delete and add users by going into the Users and Groups and adding and deleting them. I also added administrative privileges to an user account, which implied the security controls for accounts.
It also had me to create directories and subdirectories. Changing the ownership of an directory to another user account and the file permissions by using the different command keys. I learned various command keys, what they do and how they work. I didn't know that removing read and write abilities were as simple as typing sudo chmod g-rx SueWorkspace. Now I don’t look at Linux as being a system that I would never want to work on.

Linux OS, is a freely distributable, cross-platform operating system based on Unix that can be installed on PCs, laptops, netbooks, mobile and tablet devices, video game consoles, servers, supercomputers and more. The Linux OS is frequently packaged as a Linux distribution for both desktop and server use, and includes the Linux kernel (the core of the operating system) as well as supporting tools and libraries. Popular Linux OS distributions that i have worked with include Ubuntu, Fedora and Red Hat. The kernel of UNIX is the hub of the operating syste,it allocates time and memory to programs and handles the filestore and communications in response to system calls.while the shell acts as an interface between the user and the kernel. When a user logs in, the login program checks the username and password, and then starts another program called the shell. The shell is a command line interpreter (CLI). It interprets the commands the user types in and arranges for them to be carried out. The commands are themselves programs when they terminate, the shell gives the user another prompt on the system.

A PKI (public key infrastructure) enables users of a basically unsecure public network such as the Internet to securely and privately exchange data through the use of a public and a private cryptographic key pair that is obtained and shared through a trusted authority. The public key infrastructure provides for a digital certificate that can identify an individual or an organization and directory services that can store and, when necessary, revoke the certificates.

A public key infrastructure consists of a certificate authority (CA) that issues and verifies digital certificate. A certificate includes the public key or information about the public key.Then there is the registration authority (RA) that acts as the verifier for the certificate authority before a digital certificate is issued to a requestor. One or more of the directories where the certificates (with their public keys) are held in the public key. encrypt and decrypt files with PKI

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