Advanced Trainings and Cyber Range Labs Offered to Expand and Accelerate the Practice of Threat-Informed Defense

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 18, 2020 AttackIQⓇ, the leading independent vendor of breach and attack simulation (BAS) solutions, today announced major curriculum expansions to the AttackIQ Academy, including a new guest lecturer series. The AttackIQ Academy offers advanced cybersecurity training, modularized curriculum, and cyber range labs to security practitioners, free of charge. Learners get realistic, hands-on experience via labs and exercises that are based on scalable, cloud-hosted infrastructure. All Academy participants are eligible for (ISC)2 Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits.

“Our mission is to make the world safe for compute,” said Brett Galloway, CEO of AttackIQ. “The best way to do that is to help organizations apply understanding of known adversary behaviors and transform to a threat-informed defense strategy. AttackIQ Academy is our way to give back to the security community and share knowledge, skills and expertise around this exciting new posture, at no cost.”

AttackIQ Academy was launched to accelerate the practice of threat-informed defense across the industry and has quickly earned significant interest. In just four weeks, more than 1,500 students from 126 countries registered for courses. Student reviews of the curriculum, which includes foundational courses for operationalizing MITRE ATT&CK, Purple Teaming and BAS have been overwhelmingly positive.

“Staying on top of the latest approaches to managing cybersecurity is critical to my ability to effectively protect my organization. The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed how and where we do our jobs, and our attack surface has never been broader. The free trainings offered through the AttackIQ Academy armed me with practical knowledge of how to implement a more proactive, integrated and threat-informed cybersecurity strategy,” said John Edmonds, Head of Technology, Essendon Football Club.

“I recently attended the AttackIQ Academy short courses Operationalizing MITRE ATT&CK, BAS and Purple Teaming. The delivery, content, duration, and labs were relevant and well organized. AttackIQ is also a founding research partner of the Center for Threat Informed Defense (CTID). I am encouraged that this initiative brings together security minds and then gives back to the community by collaborating to improve our ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber attacks,” said Les Corria, Director of Enterprise Cybersecurity & Risk, Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

“The AttackIQ Purple Teaming course was an excellent primer on what it takes to get a Purple Team up and running with clearly defined processes to support a long term program. I was impressed by the instructor’s depth of knowledge and experience. I recommended this to my team already and would recommend it to all security practitioners interested in improving cyber defense,” said Tom Needham, Director Cyber-Security Operations, Cyber Threat Action Center, Abbott.

AttackIQ is introducing significant new Academy offerings including a guest lecturer series and advanced level II and level III courses. The guest lecturer series is designed to give students access to a broad set of security experts and topics. The Academy guest lecture series will feature numerous cybersecurity thought leaders and practitioners at the top of their field. Upcoming guest lecturers include:

A Public, Private War  – Jonathan Reiber, Senior Director for Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy at AttackIQ, and former Chief Strategy Officer for Cyber Policy and Speechwriter in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, 111.00 hrs, July 1July 1, 2020

U.S. Cybersecurity Strategy: The 2020 Election and Beyond  – Jim Trainor, Senior Vice President, Aon Cyber Solutions, and former Assistant Director for Cyber, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 10.00 hrs, July 22, 2020

Best Practices in Cybersecurity Crisis Management  – Siobhan Gorman, Partner, Brunswick Group; member, Senior Advisory Group for Harvard University’s Defending Digital Democracy Project; former Wall Street Journal reporter, 10.00 hrs, August 13, 2010

The current course catalog includes foundational courses on MITRE ATT&CK, Purple Teaming, and the best practices to plan, deploy and benefit from a BAS platform. Beginning in July, AttackIQ Academy will provide the following level II and III courses:

MITRE ATT&CK Level II – Leveraging MITRE ATT&CK Toolsets

A two-part series, these courses expand upon the key concepts taught in Foundations of MITRE ATT&CK, with a strong focus on the tools that have been developed to operationalize the MITRE ATT&CK Framework.  In this training, students will deep dive into using the ATT&CK Navigator and Threat Report ATT&CK Mapper (TRAM) in hands-on lab activities.

Purple Teaming Level II – Threat modeling and Emulation Planning
A two-part series, these courses delve more deeply into concepts from Foundations of Purple Teaming, providing background and instruction on the key processes enabling sound threat intelligence integration and organizational threat alignment.  Students will create threat models and emulation plans based on the business requirements and IT architecture of a fictional scientific research organization and, in doing so, derive the skills required to understand their own threat environment and prepare actionable plans for enacting threat-informed defenses.

BAS Level II – Deploying and Operationalizing BAS

A two part series, these courses bring together the fundamentals learned in Foundations of BAS through real-world scenario-based hands-on labs. During these courses, there will be a strong focus on designing and executing assessments in the AttackIQ Platform. Students will learn how to operationalize two BAS use cases: security controls validation and security control gap analysis.

BAS Level III – Custom Scenario (TTP) Development

This training session will provide an overview of advanced customization options and scenario content development within the AttackIQ Open System Testing Platform. This hands-on instructor-led course will teach students how to create new test scenarios via customization of Parameters, Payload/Scripts, and Python. Students will learn how to share custom content within their organization and the AttackIQ Community. As part of the lab, students will develop FIN7 discovery of data (T1082) and exfiltration of that data (T1043) by designing their very own multi-phase scenario.

BAS Level III – SecDevOps Leveraging AttackIQ API

This three part series will instruct students on how to develop applications with the AttackIQ Open System Testing Platform API to operationalize and create a fully automated BAS based SecDevOps capability. Through a series of class discussions and hands-on exercises, students will write several platform API applications to create and run security assessments and analyze the effectiveness of their security controls.

To register for an AttackIQ Academy course, please visit academy.attackiq.com.

About AttackIQ

AttackIQ, the leading independent vendor of breach and attack simulation solutions, built the industry’s first platform that enables security teams to test and measure the effectiveness of their security controls and staff. With an open platform, AttackIQ supports the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a curated knowledge base, and a model for cyber adversary behavior used for planning security improvements and verifying defenses work as expected. AttackIQ’s platform is trusted by leading companies around the world. For more information visit www.attackiq.com. Follow AttackIQ on TwitterFacebookLinkedIn, and YouTube.