Get Hands-On Cybersecurity Training: Cyber Attack Simulations & More
Cybersecurity awareness is a priority for every organization in the digital age. Cyberattacks in the U.S. have more than doubled (nearly tripled) in the years since 2018. All employees should know how to recognize phishing emails, suspicious links, and common scams. It’s valuable to schedule awareness training to protect your business — and to cover your bases for security audits.
However, IT teams often already understand, in a general sense, what to look for when it comes to cyber threats like ransomware attacks or compromised accounts. They may even “know” what should happen next. But awareness alone will not prepare a technical team to respond during an active cyber incident.
Erudio Corp offers hands-on cybersecurity training and actual cyber attack simulations as the next step in preparing your organization. Our targeted hands-on exercises and simulations prepare business leaders and technical teams for the real thing.
What Is Hands-On Cybersecurity Training
Hands-on cybersecurity training is specifically for technical teams with the skills needed to respond to cyber events. The training will put them inside a simulated cyber incident, and they’ll need to respond in real time. There’s more value in a first-person simulation than viewing a presentation or video that discusses a hypothetical scenario because participants can actively investigate, contain, communicate, and recover.
A hands-on session administered by the Erudio team could involve a cyber-attack simulation such as:
Ransomware has encrypted critical systems
A bad actor is using stolen credentials to access internal resources
A compromised vendor connection has moved through the network
Suspicious activity is spreading between endpoints
Whatever the scenario, your team has to work through the problem as it unfolds. They’ll have to review logs and isolate compromised systems while working on a solution. Decisions will need to be made quickly.
This is very different from standard awareness training or even a tabletop exercise.
Tabletop Exercises vs. Hands-On Cybersecurity Training
We regularly run both of these types of exercises, but they solve different problems.
A tabletop exercise tests thinking in a discussion-based session where diverse participants (leadership teams, managers, and non-technical staff often participate) walk through how they would respond to an incident. Everyone involved can openly discuss what should happen during an incident and how the organization would respond.
Tabletop sessions are a good starting point for leadership teams without much formal incident response experience. The discussion could potentially show you where there are communication problems, unclear responsibilities, and/or policy weaknesses.
However, tabletop exercises only measure preparedness at the planning level. They don’t ask anyone to practice the technical skills needed for real-time response to an event. Hands-on cybersecurity training focuses on technical execution and operational capabilities, specifically for IT and security teams — the ones physically responding to the issue.
Many organizations follow a “crawl, walk, run” progression. They’ll begin with discussion-based tabletop exercises, then move into more technical cyber attack simulation exercises as their processes mature and technical teams become more involved.
What Happens During a Cyber Attack Simulation Exercise?
A cybersecurity simulation training session with Erudio Corp springs from a specific scenario that’s been prepared by the instructor.
Sometimes your team will know the general incident type beforehand. Other times, the scenario begins without warning to better reflect real conditions. Once the simulation starts, participants receive alerts, system behavior changes, or evidence of compromise they must investigate.
Here are a few examples of activities you might need to perform during one of our cyber threat simulations:
Identify the initial point of compromise
Review endpoint or firewall activity
Isolate affected systems
Determine whether credentials were exposed
Communicate status updates internally
Decide when escalation is necessary
It’s not unusual for an exercise to cause confusion at first — in fact, that’s part of the point!
Your team may often discover that people interpret responsibilities differently or assume someone else is handling a task. There’s great value in learning that now rather than during an actual attack. Weaknesses can be remedied after a simulation so that the same problems won’t show up when the stakes are real.
Prepare Your Team With Cybersecurity Simulation Training From Erudio
Cyber incidents create pressure and confusion. The first time your team works through those problems should not be during a real attack.
Training is even more important now than it has been since the early internet because the rapid expansion of AI has greatly outpaced security and governance in favor of do-it-now adoption. According to new global research from IBM and Ponemon Institute, 97% of organizations have reported an AI-related security incident and lacked proper AI access controls.
Hands-on cybersecurity training is the perfect opportunity for technical staff to practice response procedures and identify weaknesses while systems and operations are not really at risk. When your organization invests in hands-on cybersecurity training, you’ll see:
Clearer ownership during incidents
Better communication between teams
Stronger incident response procedures
More confidence in existing security practices
Better preparation for compliance and audit expectations
Erudio develops cybersecurity simulation training around realistic attack scenarios that commonly impact SMBs, contractors, and regulated organizations. We facilitate everything from tabletop exercises to live technical cyber threat simulations. It’s always best for an organization to test its readiness so you can improve response capabilities before an actual incident exposes the problem.
Ready to put your response plan to the test? Contact Erudio to discuss cybersecurity exercises, simulation training, and incident readiness support for your organization.