Updated in May 2025.

This course now features Coursera Coach! A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. In this course, you'll gain essential skills in using Secure Shell (SSH) to securely connect and manage remote systems. By the end, you’ll be able to confidently set up and troubleshoot SSH connections, enabling you to manage remote Linux servers effectively. This course will equip you with practical skills to work with SSH, understand the importance of secure connections, and apply best practices to protect your systems. The course starts by introducing SSH, explaining what it is, and why mastering it is crucial for IT professionals and system administrators. You'll then move on to the installation and enabling of SSH on Linux, giving you hands-on experience with setting up SSH for real-world use cases. Following that, the course dives into certificate-based authentication, a more secure method for managing SSH access. You’ll learn how to configure certificates and use them to strengthen your SSH setup. Next, the course focuses on hardening SSH to enhance security, teaching you practical techniques for mitigating potential vulnerabilities. You’ll explore best practices for making SSH connections even more secure, ensuring that your systems remain protected from unauthorized access. This course is perfect for anyone looking to expand their knowledge in secure remote system management. Ideal for aspiring system administrators, IT professionals, or anyone managing Linux servers, it requires a basic understanding of Linux systems and network concepts. The course is beginner-friendly but does offer advanced insights into securing SSH connections.