Defensive Operations

Understand the architecture, roles, and workflows of an effective SOC.

• ▸SOC tier models, analyst roles, and responsibilities
• ▸Security tooling ecosystem and technology stack overview
• ▸Alert triage, escalation workflows, and SLA management
• ▸SOC performance metrics, KPIs, and continuous improvement

Develop deep expertise in collecting, correlating, and acting on log data.

• ▸Log source identification and normalization strategies
• ▸Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, and ELK Stack operations
• ▸Correlation rule development and use case design
• ▸SOC dashboard design, alerting, and reporting pipelines

Use intelligence to anticipate and preempt emerging threats.

• ▸Cyber threat intelligence frameworks and lifecycle
• ▸MITRE ATT&CK: TTPs, threat actor mapping, and detection
• ▸IOC management, threat feeds, and indicator enrichment
• ▸Intelligence-driven detection rule development

Systematically build and continuously improve your detection capability.

• ▸Sigma and YARA rule development and testing
• ▸Alert tuning, false positive reduction, and prioritization
• ▸Purple team exercises and adversary emulation
• ▸Detection coverage gap analysis and roadmap development

Master the full incident response lifecycle from preparation to recovery.

• ▸IR phases: preparation, detection, containment, and recovery
• ▸Playbook development and tabletop exercise facilitation
• ▸Eradication procedures and system hardening post-incident
• ▸Post-incident review, root cause analysis, and reporting

Investigate incidents thoroughly and preserve legally sound evidence.

• ▸Memory acquisition and analysis using Volatility
• ▸Disk imaging, filesystem forensics, and artifact recovery
• ▸Timeline reconstruction and event correlation
• ▸Chain of custody, evidence handling, and legal considerations

Understand what malicious code does so you can detect and respond effectively.

• ▸Static analysis: strings, PE headers, and disassembly
• ▸Dynamic analysis with sandboxing and behavioral monitoring
• ▸Unpacking, deobfuscation, and anti-analysis bypass
• ▸Developing behavioral detection signatures from analysis findings