Some of you know I have about eight courses on uDemy right now, and it’s been about eight months since I launched my first course. Overall, I’ve enjoyed it and am performing where I expected to be at this point in the process.
What’s interesting, though, are some of the reviews and how they influence people’s decisions on the course, whether to purchase it or to move on and try something else. But I do have questions about what the expectations are for information security courses that are in the public.
It’s also interesting that just the two information security courses I have on uDemy have been hammered lately in reviews to bring them below 4.0, and one of those reviews looks like by essentially sock puppets. No traces of them can be found on the internet. They only exist as a uDemy profile and not as a natural person.
The other is the president of an information security company in Poland that primarily looks at pen testing and phishing training. So, this person is pretty legit, and I would love more feedback than they gave me.
The reality of teaching information security through uDemy is that it is freaking risky. I honestly will not, and from a risk management perspective can’t teach pentesting or other stuff because of lawsuits and uncontrolled access to the materials from anywhere in the world. So, information security courses on the internet can be hazardous from the lawsuit viewpoint, and I am not in a position to play that game right now.
The good part is that all my hands-on classes, those where we walk through each step, are doing well, and not sure how I can bring that format into information security courses without incurring many risks.
I think that when I stand up my site, I’ll have more liberty to do more advanced things. But no one will find them on uDemy because of the risk. But interesting all the same, I’m not sure what people expected from the courses. Still, we need to do some expectation management about these courses so that people looking for something are finding the appropriate level of education they are looking for.