BTEC L3 IT

NEW for the 2025 AAQ specification.

These resources cover A2 of the specification and are subdivided into nine topics plus an end-of-unit assessment. Each topic contains enough content for one to two lessons of material.

Cyber security offers some of the most dramatic real-world stories in the entire IT curriculum, and this pack is full of them. Students meet the Mirai botnet, which in 2016 enslaved over 600,000 hijacked smart devices and knocked out a number of major streaming providers in a single attack. They discover how a casino's high-spending gambler database was reached through nothing more than an internet-connected fish tank thermometer, and how one unpatched software flaw let attackers into the systems of major UK companies at once.

This comprehensive pack is the second in the BTEC AAQ in Information Technology (Level 3) resource series, covering the System Vulnerabilities section of the specification across eight linked topics.

Students begin with network, organisational, software and operating system vulnerabilities, working through port types, spoofing and denial of service, file permissions and password strength, zero-day exploits and SQL injection, and the difference between an outdated system and an unsupported one. The pack then covers physical, human, cloud and IoT vulnerabilities, from theft and staff error through to misconfigured cloud settings and the weak encryption and default passwords typical of connected devices.

The final topics move from understanding vulnerabilities to finding them. Students study common attack vectors across wireless, wired and internal network connections, then explore the tools used to assess vulnerabilities and the principles of penetration testing, including due diligence, third-party certification and passive risk management.

Worksheet tasks and plenaries consolidate each topic, leaving students well prepared for understanding the A2 System Vulnerabilities that they are expected to know in the specification.