Technical Foundation for Incident Masters

The Right Level of Technical Knowledge

As an Incident Master facilitating cybersecurity education through our security training platform, you need enough technical understanding to ask good questions and recognize when participants are on productive learning paths—but you don’t need to be the most technically knowledgeable person in the room. Your participants provide the expertise; you facilitate its sharing through security awareness training methodologies that promote cybersecurity skills development via gamified incident response training experiences.

Essential Cybersecurity Concepts

Core Malware Categories

Understanding Without Expertise:

Trojans: Malware disguised as legitimate software

  • Key insight: Deception is the primary attack vector
  • IM questions: “What made this seem legitimate to users?”
  • Learning focus: Social engineering awareness and behavioral detection

Worms: Self-replicating malware that spreads through networks

  • Key insight: Network propagation without user interaction
  • IM questions: “How might this spread so quickly through our network?”
  • Learning focus: Network segmentation and vulnerability management

Ransomware: Malware that encrypts data and demands payment

  • Key insight: Business disruption through data unavailability
  • IM questions: “What would this mean for business operations?”
  • Learning focus: Business continuity and backup strategies

Rootkits: Malware that hides deep in system software

  • Key insight: Stealth and persistence are primary goals
  • IM questions: “How would you detect something designed to be invisible?”
  • Learning focus: Advanced detection and forensic analysis

APTs: Advanced Persistent Threats with sophisticated, long-term objectives

  • Key insight: Patient, well-resourced attackers with strategic goals
  • IM questions: “What would motivate someone to invest this much effort?”
  • Learning focus: Threat intelligence and strategic defense

Attack Lifecycle Understanding

Using MITRE ATT&CK as Framework:

Initial Access: How attackers first get into systems

  • IM application: “How might this attack have started?”
  • Common methods: Email, web vulnerabilities, removable media

Execution: How malware runs on target systems

  • IM application: “What needed to happen for this malware to activate?”
  • Key concept: User interaction vs. automatic execution

Persistence: How threats maintain access through restarts and updates

  • IM application: “How would this survive if we rebooted infected systems?”
  • Learning opportunity: System hardening and monitoring

Privilege Escalation: How attackers gain higher-level access

  • IM application: “What would this enable the attacker to do next?”
  • Security principle: Least privilege and access controls

Defense Evasion: How threats avoid detection

  • IM application: “Why didn’t our security tools catch this?”
  • Learning focus: Behavioral analysis and advanced detection

Discovery: How attackers learn about target environments

  • IM application: “What information would be valuable to the attacker?”
  • Defensive insight: Network segmentation and monitoring

Lateral Movement: How threats spread through networks

  • IM application: “Where might this go next?”
  • Prevention strategy: Network segmentation and access controls

Collection: How attackers gather target data

  • IM application: “What data would be most valuable to steal?”
  • Protection approach: Data classification and access monitoring

Exfiltration: How stolen data leaves the organization

  • IM application: “How would we detect data leaving our network?”
  • Technical control: Data loss prevention and network monitoring

Impact: How attacks achieve their objectives

  • IM application: “What’s the ultimate goal of this attack?”
  • Business perspective: Risk assessment and impact analysis

Technical Concepts You Should Understand

Network Security Basics

What You Need to Know:

  • Network segmentation: Dividing networks to limit threat spread
  • Firewalls: Controlling traffic between network segments
  • Monitoring: Watching network traffic for unusual patterns
  • Air gaps: Physical separation of critical systems from networks

How to Use This Knowledge:

  • Guide discussions about containment strategies
  • Ask questions about network architecture and defense
  • Help teams think about lateral movement and propagation
  • Connect technical controls to business protection

Endpoint Security Fundamentals

What You Need to Know:

  • Antivirus/Anti-malware: Signature-based detection of known threats
  • Behavioral analysis: Monitoring for unusual system behavior
  • System integrity: Ensuring systems haven’t been modified maliciously
  • Patch management: Keeping software updated to fix vulnerabilities

How to Use This Knowledge:

  • Guide discussions about detection and prevention
  • Ask questions about why security tools might fail
  • Help teams understand the limitations of different approaches
  • Connect endpoint security to user behavior and training

Data Protection Concepts

What You Need to Know:

  • Encryption: Protecting data so it’s unreadable without proper keys
  • Backup systems: Maintaining copies of important data for recovery
  • Access controls: Limiting who can access what data
  • Data loss prevention: Monitoring and controlling data movement

How to Use This Knowledge:

  • Guide discussions about ransomware response and data protection
  • Ask questions about data value and protection priorities
  • Help teams think about recovery and business continuity
  • Connect data protection to regulatory and compliance requirements

MITRE ATT&CK as Your Facilitation Framework

Using ATT&CK Without Deep Technical Knowledge

As a Question Framework: Instead of needing to know all techniques, use ATT&CK categories to structure your questions:

Initial Access Questions:

  • “How might this attack have started?”
  • “What would make users vulnerable to this approach?”
  • “How could we prevent this type of initial compromise?”

Persistence Questions:

  • “How would this maintain access if we restarted systems?”
  • “What would we need to do to completely remove this threat?”
  • “How would we detect if this came back after removal?”

Defense Evasion Questions:

  • “Why didn’t our existing security tools detect this?”
  • “What would make this difficult to find?”
  • “How might the attacker try to hide their activities?”

ATT&CK for Session Structure

Discovery Phase: Focus on Initial Access and Execution

  • Help teams understand how the attack began
  • Guide discussion of attack vectors and user interaction
  • Connect to prevention and user education opportunities

Investigation Phase: Explore Persistence, Privilege Escalation, and Discovery

  • Guide analysis of how the attack progressed
  • Help teams understand the full scope of compromise
  • Connect to containment and damage assessment strategies

Response Phase: Address Defense Evasion, Collection, and Impact

  • Guide development of response strategies
  • Help teams think about preventing future similar attacks
  • Connect to business continuity and recovery planning

Handling Technical Knowledge Gaps

When You Don’t Know the Answer

Redirect to the Group:

  • “That’s a great technical question—who here has experience with that?”
  • “How would someone with [relevant expertise] think about this?”
  • “What would you do to find out more about that technical detail?”

Focus on Learning Objectives:

  • “The important thing for our learning is understanding [concept]—how does this technical detail help with that?”
  • “We’re focusing on [learning goal]—how does this connect to that objective?”

Acknowledge and Move Forward:

  • “I don’t know the technical details, but let’s think about what this means for our response strategy.”
  • “That’s beyond my expertise—what matters for our decision-making is [relevant concept].”

Leveraging Participant Expertise

Expert Identification:

  • “Who here has worked with [relevant technology/situation]?”
  • “What’s your experience been with [relevant concept]?”
  • “How does this compare to what you’ve seen in your work?”

Teaching Moments:

  • “Can you help the rest of us understand how [technical concept] works?”
  • “What would someone new to this field need to know about [topic]?”
  • “How would you explain [concept] to a non-technical stakeholder?”

Collaborative Problem-Solving:

  • “How would you combine [Expert A’s] insight with [Expert B’s] approach?”
  • “What questions would you ask to build on what [Name] just shared?”
  • “How do these different perspectives help us understand the bigger picture?”

Emergency Technical Protocols

When Technical Discussion Goes Too Deep

Refocus on Learning Objectives:

  • “This is great technical detail—how does it inform our team’s next steps?”
  • “What decisions does this technical analysis help us make?”
  • “How would you explain the importance of this to the rest of the organization?”

Time Management:

  • “We have [X] minutes left in this phase—what’s our priority?”
  • “Let’s capture this insight and think about how it affects our overall approach.”
  • “What’s the most important takeaway from this technical discussion?”

When You’re Technically Wrong

Acknowledge and Learn:

  • “Thanks for the correction—what does that mean for our scenario?”
  • “I appreciate you setting that straight—how does the accurate information change our approach?”
  • “That’s why having experts in the room is so valuable—what should we do with this better understanding?”

Model Learning:

  • “I learned something new—how does this new information affect our thinking?”
  • “That’s a good reminder that I’m here to facilitate, not be the technical expert.”
  • “What other assumptions should we question based on this correction?”

Building Your Technical Foundation

Continuous Learning Approach

Learn from Every Session:

  • Pay attention to technical concepts that participants explain
  • Note areas where your questions could be more informed
  • Ask participants to recommend resources for learning specific topics
  • Build your understanding gradually rather than trying to learn everything at once

Focus on Conceptual Understanding:

  • Understand the “why” behind security concepts rather than technical implementation details
  • Learn how different security domains connect to each other
  • Develop intuition about what questions lead to productive learning
  • Build knowledge of how technical concepts relate to business objectives

Community Learning:

  • Connect with other Incident Masters to share knowledge and experiences
  • Participate in cybersecurity communities to stay current with trends
  • Attend conferences and training focused on cybersecurity education rather than just technical skills
  • Read case studies and incident reports to understand real-world attack patterns

The Growth Mindset

Embracing Your Learning Edge

Technical Growth Through Facilitation:

Every session teaches you something new about cybersecurity. Your role puts you in contact with diverse expertise and perspectives, making you a better-informed facilitator over time.

Teaching Others to Teach:

As you become more comfortable with technical concepts, you can help participants become better at sharing their knowledge with others—a valuable skill in cybersecurity collaboration.

Building Community Expertise:

Your growing technical understanding, combined with your facilitation skills, positions you to contribute to community knowledge and help other Incident Masters develop their capabilities.

Remember: Your technical knowledge serves your facilitation, not the other way around. Stay curious, ask good questions, and trust that the combination of your facilitation skills and your participants’ expertise creates powerful security professional development experiences through our innovative incident response tabletop exercise methodology.