Introduction

Wireshark for Network Forensics is a comprehensive, hands-on course that teaches you how to capture, analyze, and interpret network traffic across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud environments, based on the proven capabilities of Wireshark—often described as the Swiss army knife for traffic analysis and IT operations. Drawing inspiration from the Apress guide by Nagendra Kumar Nainar and Ashish Panda, this course emphasizes modern network technologies, secured control and data plane capture, and practical workflows that professionals use in the field.

Course overview

You will build confidence in end-to-end forensic practices: from establishing reliable capture points to applying display and capture filters, decrypting supported protocols, and correlating events across logs, traces, and timelines. The curriculum includes wireless (802.11) considerations, cloud network visibility patterns, and using Wireshark’s advanced views (flows, conversations, IO graphs) to turn raw packets into clear investigative stories.

By the end, you will be able to set up repeatable workflows for incident response, performance troubleshooting, and compliance evidence — ensuring your analyses are auditable, defensible, and aligned with industry expectations for IT and cloud professionals.

Key learning outcomes

• Foundations: Packet capture principles, tap vs. span, pcap/pcapng formats, and filter mastery.
• Security focus: Working with encrypted protocols, TLS handshake insight, and secure capture strategies.
• Wireless & cloud: 802.11 capture setups, cloud networking patterns, and observability integration.
• Forensic workflows: Evidence preservation, chain of custody basics, and timeline reconstruction.
• Performance analysis: Latency breakdowns, retransmission detection, throughput and QoS evaluation.
• Reporting: Building concise, visual reports with conversations, flow graphs, and filtered exports.

Hands-on modules

• Module 1: Installing Wireshark, capture interfaces, and safe lab environments.
• Module 2: Display vs. capture filters; building reusable filter libraries.
• Module 3: Deep protocol analysis (TCP, HTTP/2, DNS, TLS) and stream reassembly.
• Module 4: Wireless forensics: 802.11 frames, roaming, and WPA2/WPA3 considerations.
• Module 5: Cloud visibility: VPC/VNet flows, private links, and packet mirroring patterns.
• Module 6: Case studies: Incident response, exfil detection, and performance triage.

Who should enroll?

Ideal for network engineers, security analysts, site reliability engineers, and cloud architects who need to turn packets into actionable insights. If you support incident response, compliance audits, or performance troubleshooting, this course gives you a repeatable, standards-aligned toolkit that integrates cleanly with enterprise workflows.

Explore These Valuable Resources

• Wireshark Official Documentation
• Springer: Wireshark for Network Forensics (Book)
• Amazon: Wireshark for Network Forensics (Book)

Explore Related Courses

• Network Forensics Fundamentals
• Incident Response Essentials
• Cloud Security Best Practices
• Advanced Packet Analysis
• Security Operations and SIEM

Conclusion

Wireshark for Network Forensics empowers IT and cloud professionals to approach traffic analysis with rigor and clarity. With well-structured modules, practical labs, and industry-aligned techniques, you will gain the confidence to investigate incidents, validate hypotheses, and document findings that stand up to technical and organizational scrutiny.