Threat Detection & Incident Response
Move from working alerts to writing the detections and leading the response.
- Level
- Practitioner
- Format
- Live online cohort with case reviews
- Modules
- 6 assessed modules
About this program
There is a hard ceiling on a career spent closing tickets. The analysts who move up are the ones who can look at an attack technique and produce a detection for it — then defend that detection when it fires forty times on a Monday morning.
This program is built around that transition. You write detection logic, reason about it against realistic telemetry, tune away the noise, and document the reasoning. You also run structured hunts, where nothing has alerted and you have to form and test a hypothesis.
The second half puts you in the incident lead seat: scoping, containment calls, stakeholder communication, and the post-incident review.
What you will be able to do
- Write and tune detection rules against production-like noise
- Measure detection quality with coverage and false-positive reasoning
- Run a threat hunt from hypothesis to documented finding
- Lead an incident: scope, contain, communicate, close
- Build and maintain response playbooks a team can actually follow
- Decide what to automate safely, and what never to
Syllabus
6 modules. Every one ends in assessed, written work that a practitioner reviews.
From attack technique to detection hypothesis • Query logic for detection work • Portable, vendor-neutral detection rules • Detection-as-code: version control, review, deployment
Why good detections get switched off, and how to prevent it • Baselining normal behaviour in a noisy environment • Measuring coverage honestly against ATT&CK • Alert fatigue as an engineering problem, not an analyst problem
Forming a testable hunt hypothesis • Hunting across identity, endpoint and network data • Turning a hunt finding into a permanent detection • Documenting hunts so they are repeatable by someone else
Scoping under pressure with incomplete data • Containment trade-offs and who authorises them • Communicating to engineering, leadership and legal • Evidence handling and chain of custody basics
Writing playbooks that hold up at 3 a.m. • Safe automation: what to automate and what never to • Using AI assistance in investigation without outsourcing judgement • Keeping an audit trail when a model contributed to a decision
Detect, hunt, respond and review a full intrusion chain • Turning casework into portfolio pieces • Reasoning aloud through an unfamiliar alert • Targeting Tier 2 and detection engineering roles
What you finish with
Portfolio-grade work, reviewed by a practitioner — the part an interviewer can actually ask you about.
- 1A tuned detection rule set with documented reasoning and trade-offs
- 2A threat hunt report with hypothesis, method, findings and new detections
- 3An incident response playbook adopted and tested by peers
- 4A lead-role incident simulation with stakeholder communications
Is Threat Detection & Incident Response the right starting point?
Forty-five minutes with a mentor will settle it. If a different program suits your background better, they will say so.
Prefer email? connectbluelayersacademy@gmail.com
What the call actually is
- 45 minutes, with a mentor rather than a sales team
- A written recommendation you keep either way
- An honest answer if a program is not right for you yet
We do not guarantee placement, and we will say so on the call. What we are accountable for is whether you finish able to do the work.