Secure Shell (SSH) essentials: a hands-on guide

SSH is rarely mentioned in the technical requirements of any IT job

If you read any Linux administrator/DevOps Engineer/Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) job posting anywhere, you’ll NEVER find SSH as part of the candidate’s technical requirements. Can you guess why? Exactly! Because it’s assumed to be in your skillset ALREADY!

Today, IT professional (regardless of the platform) needs to learn how to use SSH. It’d be like hiring a call center representative who doesn’t know how to talk!

But if the average IT professional knows a thing or two about SSH, an actual Linux administrator must know how to use SSH to its max. That’s a fact. And here’s why:

• SSH allows you to securely log in to your Linux/UNIX/macOS box without revealing your credentials and data over the network. The chances of your server getting hacked are meager now.

• SSH offers key-based authentication, so you don’t need to memorize your password. Guess what? It’s even more secure than password-based authentication. Now, you can forget about spending hours developing a robust and unique password for each server!

• Over SSH, you can upload or download files and directories securely. You no longer need to deploy HTTP or FTP services and waste time configuring and securing them. Instead, you can spend that time learning your following skillset.

• Need to run Firefox on your remote machine that’s miles away? With X11 forwarding, you can run any graphical program from your remote machine over the same secure SSH connection. Trust me that’ll dazzle your colleagues.

• With “message of the day” (motd), you can use SSH to display a phrase to anyone who logs in over SSH (including you). How about “use your hand sanitizer now and then”? Or even “This is the production server. Please be careful with your commands”. Make that extra mile and do your team members a valuable favor.

This course will teach you all of the above. But there’s more!

If you already know the basic skills of SSH, this course will take those skills to the next level. You can just read on to learn more.

• SSH and OpenSSH are not the same! Learn the difference and where each of them is used. Impress your boss or your potential employer with your knowledge.

• Ubuntu does not come with SSH preinstalled for security reasons. Learn how to install it in a few seconds. Your friend’s got a new Ubuntu laptop and cannot find SSH? Be there to help.

• Is Windows your platform of choice? No problem! This class will make you work as professionals with Windows SSH clients like PuTTY and MobaXterm. You’ll be amazed by what a tiny tool like PuTTY can do. Do you need to upload or download a file and hate using the command line? WinSCP is there for you.

• Are you security paranoid? And who isn’t today?! In this class, you will learn how to tighten your grip over your machine and network to achieve even better security:

  • Is your machine connected to multiple networks (the corporate network and the public Internet)? Limit SSH connections to the corporate network only and slam the door in the hackers’ faces.

  • Want to limit SSH connections to system administrators only for that critical production server? SSH allows you to do that. Even if outside users have the correct credentials, they’ll be denied login.

Wait! There’s even more!

Once you have the basics and the advanced SSH skills, you can move to the pro level. In this part, you will learn how to use SSH in the most untraditional ways. If you thought SSH was just for secure login to servers and some fast file transfer, this part would change your mind.

• Use a jump server (bastion server) as the only entry point for many SSH servers. This host is your entry point to the servers behind it. Save time by applying the maximum security practices to only one server. Gain even more security by exposing only one server to the public network. Enjoy the peace of mind you’ll get after this step!

• Now comes the favorite! You can turn any server to which you have SSH access to a proxy server (SOCKS proxy). Do you want to access a website that requires the connection to be coming from a specific region? or do you want to test connections to a web service while simulating different clients from different countries? If you have an SSH server in that region (in the cloud, for example), you can set up an SSH SOCKS proxy on that server and use it from anywhere in the world! It’s often cheaper than using a VPN.

Gain the required SSH skills, save time, control and secure your servers, master SSH tunnels, and much more in less than 4 hours.

You can go ahead and watch the free preview lectures to get to know my teaching style. Waste no more time and hit the Enroll button now!

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• 1 stars: 4 votes
• 2 stars: 1 votes
• 3 stars: 26 votes
• 4 stars: 138 votes
• 5 stars: 166 votes

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do I have access to the course materials?

You can view and review the lecture materials indefinitely, like an on-demand channel.

Can I take my courses with me wherever I go?

Definitely! If you have an internet connection, courses on Udemy are available on any device at any time. If you don’t have an internet connection, some instructors also let their students download course lectures. That’s up to the instructor though, so make sure you get on their good side!