The Blue Team Apprentice Course (BTAC) is the entry point to k>fivefour’s defensive cyber operations training pipeline, designed to build foundational skills in detection, analysis, and incident response within enterprise environments. The course prepares students to operate as effective defenders against real-world adversary tactics observed in modern cyber intrusions.
In BTAC, students learn how attackers gain access, move through networks, and achieve objectives, and how those actions appear in logs, telemetry, and endpoint activity. Course content is informed by current threat intelligence and mapped to real adversary behaviors, enabling students to develop practical detection and response skills grounded in realistic attack scenarios.
Over five days of instructor-led, hands-on training, students operate within a purpose-built cyber range that simulates enterprise networks with integrated security monitoring. Students practice alert triage, investigation, correlation, and containment techniques while responding to active adversary activity generated within the environment. Emphasis is placed on developing repeatable analysis workflows and effective team-based response processes.
The course concludes with an operational exercise that evaluates students’ ability to detect, analyze, and respond to live attack activity under realistic conditions. A practical certification exam is available to validate applied defensive skills and analytical decision-making developed during the course.