Organizations throughout industries are experiencing important escalations in cyberattacks, significantly focusing on crucial infrastructure suppliers and cloud-based enterprises. Verizon’s just lately launched 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report discovered an 18% YoY enhance in confirmed breaches, with the exploitation of vulnerabilities as an preliminary entry step rising by 34%.
As assaults rise in quantity and impression, many organizations flip to security instruments and compliance requirements as their first line of protection. Whereas each are necessary and mandatory parts to mitigating cyber threat, they alone should not a silver bullet answer. Efficient security requires folks, course of, and know-how, however folks should function the first drivers. Your instruments and checklists are solely as robust because the practitioners implementing them at scale.
This heightens the significance of investing in offensive operations coaching throughout each function within the security operate. Too usually, offensive operations are thought of the singular area of crimson groups and penetration testers. That slim view limits its worth. Moral hacking, penetration testing, and different offensive expertise present crucial insights that profit quite a few roles on a security group. It equips practitioners with a deeper understanding of how menace actors suppose and function—foundational information that instantly strengthens a company’s collective security posture.
CISOs that prioritize investments on this type of immersive, high-impact coaching can upskill their workforce and create extra agile groups ready to adapt within the face of evolving threats. For an inside look, this is how studying tips on how to hack advantages 4 non-offensive security roles.
New Practitioners: Greedy the Menace Panorama
The cybersecurity workforce is evolving, not like any trade. Efforts to offset world staffing shortages have ushered tens of millions of latest practitioners into the sector lately. Whereas this has helped to extend headcount, talent improvement remains to be lagging. Our SANS GIAC 2025 Cyber Workforce Analysis Report discovered that 52% of security leaders point out their major problem will not be the variety of obtainable professionals, however the lack of people with the appropriate expertise.
New practitioners, particularly these from typical IT roles and non-security backgrounds, profit immensely from publicity to offensive coaching. Studying about attacker techniques, strategies, and procedures (TTPs) in experiences or courseware is effective, however it does not examine to executing them in a scenario-based simulation. By actively replicating widespread assault paths like exploiting a misconfigured internet server or bypassing entry controls, practitioners start to grasp how menace actors capitalize on management gaps. This expertise cultivates a extra intuitive grasp of threat, instructing newcomers to method security issues from a tactical perspective.
Understanding attacker methodology additionally encourages higher prioritization. It turns into simpler to determine which vulnerabilities are most definitely to be exploited and which alerts really point out malicious exercise. Publicity to attacker tooling, from open-source frameworks to industrial payloads, offers practitioners a extra grounded view of what the real-world menace panorama appears like. This information accelerates their readiness to contribute meaningfully to detection engineering, triage, remediation, and numerous different efforts.
Incident Handlers: Staying Two Steps Forward
The mixing of generative AI into TTPs has made the widespread menace actor more and more able to inflicting irremediable hurt with a single breach. This implies incident response calls for pace, readability, and precision now greater than ever—the margin for error is razor skinny. Whereas instruments and automation help in detection, practitioners should be positioned to maximise operational effectivity in advanced security environments. In flip, incident handlers who perceive how adversaries function are higher geared up to maneuver past easy playbooks and reply with intent. Offensive coaching sharpens this intuition. Practising privilege escalation, persistence strategies, or lateral motion in simulated environments equips handlers to acknowledge attacker aims and anticipate subsequent steps, even earlier than alerts are triggered.
Attackers usually comply with repeatable workflows. As soon as you have carried out these strategies your self—corresponding to abusing misconfigured Lively Listing permissions or exploiting token impersonation—you develop into extra attuned to refined indicators of compromise that detection instruments could overlook. Furthermore, a deeper information of adversary habits helps quicker root trigger evaluation and containment. Realizing the constraints and habits of menace actors permits response groups to hunt proactively, isolate affected methods extra precisely, and suggest remediations that handle root weaknesses.
Forensic Analysts: Contextualizing Digital Artifacts
Digital forensics is dependent upon the flexibility to reconstruct occasions utilizing logs, reminiscence dumps, file methods, and different artifacts. Whereas forensic instruments present visibility, their outputs usually lack clear which means with out sensible context. Analysts who’ve studied and executed offensive strategies usually tend to acknowledge the operational patterns behind technical knowledge. That perception might imply the distinction between a primary report and one that really displays attacker exercise.
When an analyst have created malicious payloads or evaded logging mechanisms in a coaching surroundings, they’ll higher decipher the nuances of what a instrument is flagging. This aids in recognizing cast timestamps, tampered registry keys, or anomalous course of execution sequences. Analysts are then in a position to formulate stronger hypotheses and hint lateral motion with better precision.
Safety Managers: Validating Technique with Adversary Perception
Safety managers are sometimes tasked with aligning cyber defenses to organizational priorities and evolving enterprise dangers. Whereas they will not be writing detection guidelines or responding to incidents instantly, their selections have a long-lasting impression on threat posture and program maturity. Managers who’ve participated in the appropriate moral hacking packages acquire strategic readability that’s tough to accumulate in any other case. They know what high-quality penetration testing appears like, how actual adversaries exploit systemic weaknesses, and the place their groups could have blind spots.
That perspective helps managers keep away from overreliance on toolsets or compliance frameworks that present a false sense of assurance. Whenever you perceive how adversaries chain collectively low-severity vulnerabilities, bypass weak configurations, or exploit human habits, you’re higher positioned to ask the appropriate questions of distributors and inside groups. It additionally means that you can outline extra significant crimson group aims, assess ROI from testing efforts, and guarantee remediation efforts concentrate on exploitable gaps, not simply coverage violations.
Able to sharpen your edge? Be a part of me at two upcoming dwell coaching occasions, SANS San Antonio and SANS Offensive Operations East, for our SEC560: Enterprise Penetration Testing course and switch attacker insights into strategic benefit. Elevate your group’s functionality the place it counts—on the entrance strains.
Be aware: This text was expertly written and contributed by Jon Gorenflo, SANS Principal Teacher. Study extra about this background and programs right here.
