Mandiant, Inc., the leader in dynamic cyber defense and response, today announced its new training program – Mandiant Academy. Leveraging Mandiant’s leading threat intelligence and cyber security expertise, the program provides education courses, incident response and threat intelligence analysis certifications, and operational skills training to meet the shifting needs of security teams today. Delivered by frontline industry experts, Mandiant Academy is designed to help close the cyber security skills gap by maturing security teams’ on-the-job capabilities and improving their ability to prevent, detect and respond to today’s evolving threat actors.
An estimated nearly half a million cyber security jobs remain open. This skills gap is compounded by the fact that cyber criminals’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) have become more advanced and unpredictable. Organizations need to implement strategies that involve training their security teams to develop and grow their problem-solving and critical thinking skills to defeat threats at hand. With flexible delivery options to meet specific organizational needs, Mandiant Academy helps ensure that cyber security practitioners are equipped with the right skillsets and latest knowledge on the attacker landscape to be even greater assets to their organizations before, during, and after an incident.
To further the impact of Mandiant’s training program, the company is collaborating with VetSec, Inc., a non-profit organization that helps veterans enter careers in cyber security, to offer 33 VetSec, Inc. members complimentary access to Mandiant Academy’s On-Demand Cyber Threat Intelligence Training courses.
“We’re thrilled to provide a subset of our members this robust program and access to in-depth training from the cyber security experts fighting sophisticated attackers every day,” said Tom Marsland, Board Chairman at VetSec, Inc. “At VetSec, Inc., we work with veterans to help them continue to excel or transition out of the military and secure careers in IT and cyber security. This includes providing the best, free resources like Mandiant Academy.”
The On-Demand Cyber Threat Intelligence Training courses provide security practitioners with professional-grade classes to learn critical security skills, including best practice threat intelligence frameworks, attacker tradecraft, RFI analysis and more.
In addition to these courses, Mandiant Academy gives organizations a range of tailored education options, including:
- A proctor-based certifications program designed to test security teams’ incident response capabilities and threat intelligence knowledge against real-world cyber threats.
- Courses that are instructor-led, dedicated to one organization or delivered remotely to individual security professionals.
- On-demand sessions that can be taken from the comfort of a student’s home or other desired space, at their convenience.
- Immersive, hands-on experiences customized to validate a team’s capabilities with real-world scenarios in Mandiant’s ThreatSpace cyber range, a three-day cyber simulation exercise that emulates real-world threats.
- Security Expertise and Incident Response courses taught by active security practitioners. Leveraging Mandiant’s extensive incident response experience on the frontlines, these instructors offer first-hand knowledge of attacker TTPs, tools and malware to apply on-the-job.
Mandiant is also introducing a new book, “The Defender’s Advantage”, for cyber security professionals and organization leaders as an educational resource. “The Defender’s Advantage” provides expert insights on activating cyber defenses and employing accelerators to gain an advantage in the evolving cyber security landscape. The book includes advice on building security teams with the right people, right processes, and right capabilities to hunt for threats and manage incidents, as well as expertise from leaders in the field including Mandiant’s Threat Intelligence and Strategic Consulting Teams.
Nick Bennett, Vice President of Mandiant Consulting, added, “Most cyber security organizations are hyper-focused on equipping their Security Operation Centers (SOC) with the latest tools to defend against cyber attacks within their own environment. Creating a strong cyber security team goes beyond implementing the latest tools and solutions. It is about finding and developing the right people to cultivate a high-performance team equipped to navigate the rapidly changing cyber landscape. As such, our team of experts felt it was our duty to educate and bring together the cyber security community by creating a guidebook. Together we can all work to improve cyber defense capabilities and close the industry-wide cyber security skills gap.”