Offensive Security for Defenders

Master Offensive Security for Defenders

Think like an attacker to defend like an expert. Learn offensive security techniques to understand real attacker campaigns, uncover detection gaps, and build resilient defences that go far beyond alerts, so you can detect, disrupt, and stop sophisticated adversaries in your environment.

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View Pricing Download Lab Pack Take End of Course Exam → 40 CPE Credits

What you'll be able to do

✓Simulate real-world attacker techniques and campaigns using red team tactics and living-off-the-land methods

✓Think like an attacker to identify blind spots and detection gaps in your current security controls

✓Translate offensive techniques into stronger, more effective detections and hunting hypotheses

✓Proactively hunt and detect sophisticated attacker campaigns that evade traditional alerts

✓Assess and improve your organisation's defences by understanding how real breaches actually happen

✓Build campaign-focused detection strategies instead of isolated alert-based rules

Course Agenda View all 13 modules

Course overview

The Offensive Security for Defenders course is built specifically for Security Practitioners who want to detect campaigns, not just alerts. You'll gain practical, hands-on expertise to:

✓ Simulate real-world attacker techniques using MITRE ATT&CK and living-off-the-land methods

✓ Think like a red teamer to identify blind spots in your current detection and prevention controls

✓ Improve threat detection engineering by understanding how attacks actually work

✓ Translate offensive knowledge into stronger defences, hunting, and response capabilities

By the end, you'll have the offensive mindset and technical skills to proactively find and close detection gaps, making your organisation significantly harder to compromise.

Who this course is for

You're a Security Practitioner (SOC analyst, Detection Engineer, Threat Hunter, or Blue Teamer) who wants to move beyond triaging alerts to detecting full attacker campaigns. This course is built for you if you want to:

✓ Develop an offensive security mindset to better understand and counter real adversaries

✓ Learn how attackers operate so you can build more resilient detections and defences

✓ Bridge the gap between red team tactics and blue team detection engineering

✓ Significantly improve your ability to find stealthy, persistent threats in your environment

In short: if you're ready to detect campaigns, not just alerts, and become a much more effective defender, this course is for you.

What you'll learn

By the end of this Offensive Security for Defenders course you will be able to:

✓ Understand and replicate common attacker techniques across the MITRE ATT&CK framework

✓ Simulate realistic attack scenarios to test and improve your detection capabilities

✓ Identify detection gaps and blind spots by thinking like a red teamer

✓ Build high-fidelity detections and hunting queries based on real campaign behaviour

✓ Apply offensive knowledge to enhance threat hunting, incident response, and detection engineering

✓ Develop a campaign-aware defensive strategy that focuses on adversary behaviour rather than isolated IOCs

Key course takeaways

✓ Develop a true offensive mindset that makes you a far more effective defender

✓ Master the ability to detect full attacker campaigns instead of just individual alerts

✓ Proactively identify and close detection gaps before real attackers exploit them

✓ Translate red team techniques into stronger blue team detections and hunting playbooks

✓ Significantly improve your organisation's resilience against sophisticated, stealthy threats

✓ Become the defender who understands attackers better than they understand your environment

Things you need to know

What are the prerequisites for this course?

There are no prerequisites. The course teaches offensive concepts from a defender's perspective. Familiarity with KQL, Microsoft Sentinel, and Defender XDR will help you move faster, but neither is required. Every tool and technique is explained at first use.

What are the device requirements?

A device with a modern browser. Access to a lab environment for running offensive tools (the course walks you through setup). You will also benefit from a Microsoft 365 E5 developer tenant for detection development.

How will the course benefit your career?

Defenders who understand offensive operations are dramatically more effective at detection engineering, threat hunting, and incident response. This course gives you the attacker's perspective so you can anticipate campaign patterns, build detections that survive tool rotation, and investigate incidents at the campaign level rather than the alert level.

Offensive understanding is increasingly a prerequisite for senior detection engineering, threat hunting, and security architecture roles.

Usage rights and disclaimer

Course materials: Licensed for individual professional development. You may deploy detection rules, queries, and analysis techniques in your production environment. You may not redistribute course content or share account credentials.

Offensive techniques: All attack execution is in your own isolated lab. Do not execute techniques against systems you do not own or have explicit written authorization to test.

Fictional environment: All scenarios use Northgate Engineering. Any resemblance to real organizations is coincidental.

Version and changelog

Current version: 1.0 | Last updated: June 2026

June 2026, v1.0: Course page restructured. 12 modules across the full offensive lifecycle from attacker planning through campaign reconstruction. 10 campaign telemetry datasets.

This course is actively maintained.

COURSE ASSESSMENT

End of Course Exam

Complete the course, then prove your skills under time pressure. Pass mark: 70. Earn your certificate with CPE credits.

40minutes

3phases

100points

1scenario

Take End of Course Exam

Requires 80% course completion. One random scenario per attempt. Certificate issued on pass.