World-renowned CMU-SEI (Carnegie Mellon University – Software Engineering Institute) course on Incident Handling^*

This 5-day course is for computer security incident response team (CSIRT) technical staff who have little or no incident handling experience. It provides a strong introduction to the main incident handling tasks and critical thinking skills that will help an incident handler perform their daily work. It is recommended for personnel new to incident handling work.

The course is designed to provide insight into the work that an incident handler may perform. It provides a comprehensive overview of the incident handling arena, including CSIRT services, intruder threats, and the nature of incident response activities.

Course attendees will learn how to gather the information required to handle an incident; realise the importance of having and following pre-defined CSIRT policies and procedures; understand the technical issues relating to commonly reported attack types; perform analysis and response tasks for various sample incidents; apply critical thinking skills in responding to incidents, and identify potential problems to avoid while taking part in CSIRT work. The course incorporates interactive instruction, practical exercises, and role playing. Attendees have the opportunity to participate in sample incidents that they might face on a day-to-day basis.

This course is part of the curriculum for the CERT-Certified Incident Handler program. After completing this course, participants are encouraged to attend the companion course, Advanced Incident Handling.

Note: There is significant content overlap between this course and the Managing Computer Security Incident Response Teams course. We recommend that attendees register for one course or the other, but not both. This course covers more technical topics such as email and malware attacks, PGP, and recognising signs of attack. It is designed to introduce new incident handlers to the basic skills and processes they will need to perform duties. Whereas the Managing CSIRTs course focuses on incident handling issues from an operational management perspective.

^*World leading course

This course is presented in association with Axenic, a member of the SEI (Software Engineering Institute) Partner Network, Carnegie Mellon University. SEI is a recognised world leader and one of the most respected names in computer, software and security research, development and education. Other courses in this series are:

Creating a Computer Security Incident Response Team
Managing Computer Security Incident Response Teams