Cover of AI Blue

Book 8 · Workbook

AI Blue

Objectives, key concepts, discussion questions, exercises and self-tests for every lesson, on one page to print.

6 modules28 lessons

The course

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How to use this workbook

The workbook follows the course on AI Blue lesson by lesson. Read the chapter (or its whitepaper) before each lesson, bring the workbook to the session and keep what you produce in the exercises: they add up to the final assignment.

After the course you can

Module 1 · Part I · The Blue Team in Question

Part I sets the baseline and the definition. It states the book's five-part working thesis, describes the blue team before the transformation through the five functions B1 Anticipate, B2 Detect, B3 Investigate, B4 Respond and B5 Learn, weighs the evidence on three pressures, and defines the transformed team as an artefact: a charter, a delegation profile and a delegation register. Participants leave with a first AI inventory, a function map, a pressure register and a draft delegation profile.

Chapter 1 · 75 minutes

Introduction: The Blue Team Transformed

The lesson states the book's question: what the blue team becomes now that AI reads, enriches, triages and in places acts on the queue. Participants meet the five blue team functions, the five degrees of delegation, the five-part working thesis with its refutation conditions, the European instruments that make the question current, and the two organisations, Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual, with their commissions AIDR-0700 and AIDR-0750.

Learning objectives

  • Explain the five parts of the working thesis and name the evidence that would refute each one
  • Distinguish the three places where AI sits in a blue team's work and the usage modes they correspond to
  • Describe the five degrees of delegation and explain why the line between Level 2 Supervised and Level 3 Bounded matters most
  • Draft a first inventory of the AI that already takes part in a team's work

Key concepts

Blue team
The group of people and functions that defend an organisation: analysts, detection engineers, threat intelligence analysts, threat hunters, incident responders and on-call engineers. The book treats the whole team, not only the security operations centre.
Working thesis
The book's own five-part conclusion: transformed, not abolished; from the queue to the loop; autonomy matched to reversibility; the defenders' AI is defended; and the route to the craft and staff wellbeing are design questions. Each part carries a refutation condition.
Degrees of delegation
The series' autonomy levels applied per function and per action class, from Level 0 Advisory to Level 4 Autonomous. The mode says how the AI is deployed and whose identity it uses; the level says who decides each action.
Level 3 Bounded
The AI executes a defined class of action inside a codified playbook enforced by a policy decision point outside the model, with sampling and a stop path. It is defined by the playbook and the policy decision point, not by the model's confidence.
Records, not claims
The rule that the team's work appears as versioned artefacts in version control, such as detection records, case records, playbook manifests, hunt records, post-incident reviews and mandate manifests.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Which degree of delegation is this?
  • Scenario: The summary that arrived in a supplier release

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. In the three night scenes the degree of delegation came from a default. Which defaults in your own tools or contracts are setting a degree of delegation today?
  2. The thesis is presented as a claim about design, not a prediction. What changes in how a management body should read it because of that distinction?
  3. Nordvik Region has to create a practice and Hansa Mutual has to restrain one. Which of the two positions is closer to your organisation, and what follows for where you start?

Exercise · 25 minutes

A first inventory of AI in the team's work

Using the practical guide of the chapter, list every tool in the path from telemetry to closure for your own team, or for Nordvik Region as the chapter describes it (procured SIEM, EDR, email gateway and a managed provider under NR-2025-044). For each tool and managed service record every feature that uses a model. Assign each finding a usage mode, the blue team functions it touches, the data class it processes and a provisional degree of delegation as it actually behaves. Mark each finding as decided, tolerated or unknown. For the managed service, write the three questions the guide says to ask in writing. Do not use logs to find individual analysts.

Deliverable: An inventory table with one row per AI capability, giving mode, functions, data class, actual level, owner and status, plus the three written questions to the provider.

Self-test

  1. According to the chapter, what did the three night scenes at Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual have in common?

    1. In each scene an agent took an irreversible action at Level 4 Autonomous without any playbook
    2. In none of them did anyone choose a degree of delegation; it came from defaults
    3. In each scene the managed provider had breached framework agreement NR-2025-044
    4. In all of them a works council had refused consent to the tool
  2. What defines Level 3 Bounded in the chapter's table of degrees of delegation?

    1. A person approves each proposed action before it runs, and the model only drafts it
    2. The model's confidence score exceeds a threshold that the supplier has set
    3. The AI selects and executes actions without a playbook bound or a prior human decision
    4. A codified playbook enforced by a policy decision point outside the model
  3. Which evidence would refute the thesis claim 'autonomy matched to reversibility'?

    1. Evidence that irreversible containment at Level 4 Autonomous causes less harm than at Level 3 Bounded or below
    2. Evidence that queue-centred teams match loop-centred teams on coverage, time to contain and strain on staff
    3. Evidence that agents reading attacker-writable input need no more containment than other automation
    4. Evidence that analysts' wellbeing is unaffected by working at machine speed and on call

Chapter 2 · 75 minutes

What the Blue Team Does: Five Functions, Tiers and the Alert Queue

The lesson describes the blue team before the transformation. Participants define the five blue team functions and their boundaries, map them to the Functions of NIST CSF 2.0, examine the tiered SOC and its four assumptions, the tools and the personal data they hold, the measures a SOC reports and what each rewards, and separate craft from routine. The artefact is the function map.

Learning objectives

  • Define the five blue team functions and apply the four boundaries the chapter draws between them
  • Explain the four assumptions on which the tiered SOC and its queue rest
  • Identify what each common SOC measure rewards when it is used alone
  • Draft a function map that records owners, tools, automation without a reader and craft

Key concepts

Function map
The first artefact of the book: for each of the five functions it names who performs it, with which tools and data location, which parts already run without a person reading, who agreed to them, the current measures and the parts judged to be craft.
Boundary between B2 Detect and B3 Investigate
Triage belongs to B3 Investigate, not to B2 Detect. B2 answers for whether the alert should exist; B3 answers for what it means.
Four assumptions of the tiered SOC
Volume is handled by headcount, skill is acquired by doing the routine, the queue is the interface, and a person reads each alert. Chapters 5 to 11 test these assumptions.
Craft and routine
Routine is work that follows a known procedure, is repeated in the same form and can be checked against a rule. Every function contains both craft and routine, and the transformation is a redistribution between them.
Automation without a reader
The parts of a function that already close or act without a person reading, whether vendor features, SOAR playbooks or a provider's processes. They form the Mode 0 and automation baseline and need a named person who accepted them.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Craft or routine?
  • Match: Six tools and what they carry

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The chapter says the function, not the job title, is the unit of the book. What does your organisation lose or gain when it describes its security work by function instead of by title?
  2. Tier 1 is both where the queue is worked and where analysts learn. What happens to each purpose if the routine is automated?
  3. Security telemetry records what named people did. How does that fact change who should be in the room when the team introduces an AI capability?

Exercise · 25 minutes

Mapping a team's work

Follow the eight steps of the chapter's practical guide. List the five functions as rows. For each, name the person or provider who performs it today, or record it as unowned. Record the tools and where the data sits, the tier or role and the hours covered. Mark the parts that already run without a person reading and who agreed to them, the current measures and who sees them, and the parts you judge to be craft, with a short reason. Give every row a review date no more than six months ahead. Use your own team, or Nordvik Region, where the chapter shows a phishing-report classifier in the email gateway with acceptance not recorded.

Deliverable: A five-row function map with owner, tools, data location, hours, automation without a reader and who accepted it, measures, craft and review date.

Self-test

  1. To which function does the chapter assign triage, and why?

    1. B2 Detect, because the alert is the product of a detection and its owner must also say what it means
    2. B4 Respond, because triage ends in a containment decision
    3. B3 Investigate, because B2 answers for whether the alert should exist and B3 for what it means
    4. B1 Anticipate, because triage relies on threat intelligence and exposure data
  2. What does Nordvik Region's function map show before any transformation begins?

    1. An automation that closes alerts and that nobody accepted for the Region, and three unowned functions
    2. A full pyramid of tiers with a named owner for every one of the five functions
    3. A detection-engineering team of four that manages detections as code
    4. A group red team of five that runs quarterly purple exercises with the detection engineers
  3. What does the chapter say about the measures a SOC traditionally reports, such as mean time to detect, mean time to respond and closure rate?

    1. They are obsolete and should be removed from every management report
    2. They are required by NIS 2 and therefore cannot be changed
    3. They measure individual analysts fairly as long as the figures are reported by name
    4. They count speed, volume or coverage, and none counts the quality of a judgement

Chapter 3 · 90 minutes

The Pressure on the Blue Team: Machine-Speed Adversaries, Alert Volume and Scarce Talent

The lesson weighs the three pressures on the blue team: adversaries that use AI, an alert queue that can exceed human capacity, and scarce talent. Participants learn to read agency assessments, developer reports and laboratory studies differently, to label each pressure observable, expected or speculation, and to see why the pressure justifies transformation but not autonomy by itself. The artefact is a pressure register with a local measure and a decision per pressure.

Learning objectives

  • Compare what agency assessments, developer and threat-intelligence reports and laboratory studies can and cannot show about adversaries' use of AI
  • Classify the chapter's pressures as observable, expected or speculation and justify each label
  • Explain the four reasons why speed alone does not justify autonomy
  • Draft a pressure register entry with evidence, label, local measure, threshold and decision

Key concepts

Pressure register
One reviewed file that keeps the pressures bearing on the team, each with its evidence, its label, a local measure, a threshold and the decision it informs, so the team does not respond to the loudest headline or a vendor's account of urgency.
Exploitation window
The time between a vulnerability becoming known and its exploitation. Mandiant reported an average of 5 days for vulnerabilities disclosed in 2023, down from 63 days in 2018 and 2019, and M-Trends 2026 an estimated mean of minus seven days for 2025.
Four ways out of the capacity arithmetic
When demand exceeds triage capacity a team can lower the triage time per alert, which automation offers, lower the inflow, which detection engineering offers, add people, which the labour market limits, or accept that alerts are closed unread, the failure the first three exist to avoid.
Capability versus use
Laboratory studies show what AI systems can do under test conditions, which is different from what adversaries are documented to do. The chapter keeps the two apart when it weighs the evidence.
Design assumption
Machine-speed adversaries as the normal case for a European organisation is the book's design assumption, not a forecast: an inference the team plans for and tests by drill.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: What kind of source is this?
  • Scenario: Urgency from a vendor

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. ANSSI reported no confirmed AI-assisted attack against French actors in February 2026, while GTIG reported an AI-developed exploit in a criminal plan in May 2026. How can both statements be held without contradiction?
  2. The chapter admits that no source in its bibliography measures telemetry growth across organisations. How should a team argue for investment when the evidence for its own load is local?
  3. The chapter argues that cutting the team is not a response to pressure. What arguments would you expect from a budget holder, and what evidence would answer them?

Exercise · 30 minutes

Writing the team's pressure register

Following the seven steps of the practical guide, choose three pressures that matter locally, starting from the chapter's table. For each, record the evidence and say in one line what it measured (population, period, method), marking any figure that rests on a single case or a vendor's own platform. Label each entry observable, expected or speculation. Attach one local measure the team already has, for example the 90th percentile hours from a feed entry to mitigation. Name a threshold and the decision the SOC lead takes when it is crossed. Set a review date and review triggers. No entry may measure a named person.

Deliverable: A three-entry pressure register with label, source, local measure, threshold, decision, review date and triggers for each pressure.

Self-test

  1. In the chapter's assumed illustration for a team shaped like Nordvik Region's, what is the relation between demand and capacity in the staffed hours?

    1. 600 alerts against a capacity of 300, so half of them go unread
    2. 300 alerts against a capacity of 225, so demand is 1.3 times capacity
    3. 225 alerts against a capacity of 300, so the team has spare capacity for hunting
    4. 300 alerts against a capacity of 600, so the provider is not needed
  2. Which label does the chapter give to fully autonomous campaigns at scale against European targets?

    1. Observable, because developers have reported such campaigns
    2. Expected, because ENISA judges them highly likely
    3. A design assumption that needs no evidence
    4. Speculation, because no source documents it
  3. Which of these is one of the chapter's four reasons why pressure does not justify autonomy on grounds of speed alone?

    1. Speed that is wrong is faster to cause harm, such as a containment that wrongly isolates a production system
    2. AI systems are too slow to match adversaries whose tooling works in bursts of seconds
    3. European law prohibits any automated containment action in a SOC
    4. Adversaries have not yet been observed using AI anywhere along the attack chain

Chapter 4 · 105 minutes

The Transformed Blue Team Defined: Mandate, Functions and Degrees of Delegation

The lesson defines the transformed blue team as an artefact. Participants study the team charter with its mandate and decision rights, the action classes AC-0 to AC-4 and their default ceilings, the six rules that make a delegation profile enforceable, the delegation register with its reversibility tests, the chain of accountability that does not move, and the review triggers. They compare the profiles DLG-HM-SOC-01 and DLG-NR-SEC-01.

Learning objectives

  • Classify response actions into the classes AC-0 to AC-4 and state the default ceiling of each
  • Apply the six rules of the delegation profile to a proposed delegation
  • Explain who answers when AI closed an alert and an analyst accepted the closure
  • Draft a team charter extract and first delegation profile entries with named owners, stop holders and review dates

Key concepts

Team charter
A versioned artefact, identified as ROLE-*, that states the team's mandate (scope, authority, obligation), its decision rights and what is not delegable to any system. It is owned by the CISO and the SOC lead.
Delegation profile
The artefact, identified as DLG-*, that states for every capability the usage mode and the level at which it may act, per function and action class. An unlisted action is not delegated and the lowest ceiling governs.
Action classes AC-0 to AC-4
AC-0 Preserve and AC-1 Narrow and reversible have a default ceiling of Level 3 Bounded; AC-2 Wide or business-critical and AC-3 Partly reversible, or about a person, Level 2 Supervised; AC-4 Irreversible or external, Level 1 Assisted.
Delegation register
The sum of what has been delegated. Each row records the delegation, function and class, level, the record that granted it, the fallback if the AI is removed and the date of the next reversibility test.
Asymmetry of the stop right
Raising a level is a recorded decision by the named grant authority; lowering a level or stopping an agent can be done at once by any holder of the stop right. Restart is the owner's decision after review.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: The stack of artefacts
  • Scenario: A class that should not keep closing

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. Both organisations use Level 4 for no action at all, a stronger position than the rule requires. What does a bright line make cheaper, and what might it cost?
  2. At Nordvik Region the CISO is both owner and grant authority. How does the charter compensate, and would that compensation be enough in your organisation?
  3. The chapter says 'the AI closed it' is a statement of mechanism, not of responsibility. How would a post-incident review in your organisation need to change to honour that?

Exercise · 40 minutes

A first delegation profile in one working session

Work as the authors named in the practical guide. Inventory the AI capabilities of your team, or of Hansa Mutual's group SOC as the chapter describes it, by name, usage mode and identity. For each, list what it can do and give each action a response class from AC-0 to AC-4, or mark it as having no effect on the estate. Set the level for each action so that the lowest ceiling governs, keep Modes 1 to 3 at or below Level 2, and name the playbook and policy decision point for every Level 3 entry. Name the owner, the stop holders, the grant authority and the decider. Add a reversibility test date and the not-delegable block.

Deliverable: A delegation profile of at least six entries with function, capability, mode, action, class, level, named owner, stop holder and review date, plus the first rows of a delegation register.

Self-test

  1. What is the default ceiling for an AC-3 action, such as disabling the account of a named user?

    1. Level 3 Bounded, inside a playbook enforced by a policy decision point
    2. Level 4 Autonomous, provided the agent has an identity of its own
    3. Level 2 Supervised, with a named human approver
    4. Level 0 Advisory, with no drafting by the system
  2. According to the profile rules, what happens to a Level 3 entry that does not name the playbook or closure policy that bounds it and its enforcement by a policy decision point outside the model?

    1. It remains Level 3 until the next calendar review of the profile
    2. It counts as Level 2, because Level 3 must name its enforcement
    3. It is promoted to Level 4 by the grant authority
    4. It is removed from the delegation register
  3. What does the review default prescribe when a delegation fails its reversibility test?

    1. The test is repeated at the next quarterly drill before anything changes
    2. The agent's model is replaced and the level is kept
    3. The management body accepts the residual risk in its minutes
    4. The entry drops one level at once and further delegation in its function is frozen

Module 2 · Part II · The Craft

Part II follows the craft function by function: B1 Anticipate, B2 Detect, B3 Investigate, B4 Respond and B5 Learn. Each chapter shows what AI now drafts, ranks, closes or executes, what remains a human decision, and which versioned artefact carries the work: intelligence, detection, case, hunt, playbook and review records. Participants leave able to write a closure policy, review an AI-assisted case, set the ceiling for a response action, drill a stop path and close a finding on a passing re-test.

Chapter 5 · 75 minutes

Anticipate: Threat Intelligence and Exposure at Machine Speed

The lesson treats B1 Anticipate and the part of B2 Detect it feeds. Participants follow the five-stage pipeline from report to hypothesis, keep intelligence as code with STIX, TAXII and ATT&CK identifiers, join EPSS, the KEV catalogue and the EUVD with local asset context, learn the five characteristic faults of AI extraction, and design verification by grounding, sampling and seeded errors when sources may be written by adversaries.

Learning objectives

  • Describe the five stages from report to routed hypothesis and locate the two human decision points and the verification step
  • Explain what EPSS, the KEV catalogue and the EUVD each answer and why none of them replaces local asset context
  • Identify the five things AI does badly in intelligence extraction and the control that answers each
  • Design a weekly intelligence-to-detection routine with a named reviewer, seeded errors and a conversion rate

Key concepts

Hypothesis
A statement about adversary behaviour that could be true in this estate and can be tested. An accepted hypothesis is routed to a detection requirement, a hunt, a patch priority or a recorded decision to do nothing, with the reason.
Grounding check
Every technique, indicator and claim in an extraction links to a quoted span of the source. A proposal without a span is rejected without further discussion.
The join
The B1 task of combining each vulnerability from the public feeds with local asset context, such as internet reachability, the data and business process carried and compensating controls, because the feeds know nothing about the organisation.
Seeded errors
Known errors inserted into a share of batches, such as an altered indicator, a neighbouring technique or an unsupported attribution, to measure whether review catches them. The routine seeds one in every batch of twenty proposals.
Conversion rate
The share of accepted hypotheses that reached a deployed detection, a completed hunt or a changed priority within 30 days, measured monthly and reported at team level.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: From report to routed hypothesis
  • Scenario: The hedge that became a statement

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The decision to accept a hypothesis is described as the one least suited to automation. What does your organisation know about itself that an extraction system would not have been told?
  2. Hansa Mutual's risk is that extraction outruns the engineering capacity to use it. How would you recognise a flood of accepted but unused hypotheses, and what would you change?
  3. A grounding check does not catch tampered provenance, because the quoted text is genuine. Which of the chapter's controls covers that hazard, and how strong is it?

Exercise · 25 minutes

A weekly intelligence-to-detection routine

Following the eight steps of the practical guide, write three to five intelligence requirements for your organisation, or for Nordvik Region, which has no intelligence analyst and consumes national CSIRT and sharing-group reporting. List the sources by tier with their handling rules. Specify the extraction at Level 1 Assisted with the grounding check on and no tools that act. Define the review meeting, the reviewer who differs from the analyst, the seeding of one error in every twenty proposals, the routing deadline and the monthly conversion measure. State how measures are reported at team level and when the routine is reviewed. For Nordvik, adapt the cadence to what the chapter calls realistic.

Deliverable: A routine specification with requirements, tiered sources, extraction level, review and seeding rules, routing options, conversion measure and review triggers.

Self-test

  1. Why does the extraction system in the chapter's pipeline hold no tools that act, such as updating a block list?

    1. Because adversaries write some of what it reads, so a hostile document must end as no more than a bad proposal
    2. Because the AI Act classifies intelligence extraction as a high-risk AI system that may not act
    3. Because STIX 2.1 objects cannot be written to a block list automatically
    4. Because the exposure feeds are refreshed too rarely for automated use
  2. What does the EPSS feed provide, according to the chapter?

    1. A list of vulnerabilities for which exploitation in the wild has already been observed
    2. A European database launched by ENISA under the NIS 2 Directive
    3. A probability that a published CVE will be exploited in the wild in the next 30 days
    4. A ranking of the organisation's assets by internet exposure
  3. In the routine's defaults, what does the seeded-error catch rate control?

    1. Whether the extraction system may be promoted to Level 3 Bounded
    2. Which analyst receives the reviewer role in the following quarter
    3. Whether indicators in the block list are allowed to expire
    4. Whether the team may move from full review to sampled review

Chapter 6 · 90 minutes

Detect: Detection Engineering as Code

The lesson treats B2 Detect as engineering. Participants learn the six elements of a detection record, the pipeline from requirement through test gate, staged rollout and rollback, the four recurring faults of AI-drafted detections, the four layers of test, the alert budget, the four rights needed over supplier detections and the five kinds of detection debt, using DET-HM-0455 and DET-NR-0001.

Learning objectives

  • List the six things a detection record holds that a rule in a console does not
  • Review an AI-drafted detection against the six steps of the chapter's protocol
  • Distinguish unit, replay, simulation and purple-loop tests by what each shows
  • Classify detection debt as stale, untested, noisy, blind or orphaned and propose a way to pay it down

Key concepts

Detection record
The versioned definition of one detection, identified as DET-NR-NNNN or DET-HM-NNNN. It holds logic, data sources with a health check, an ATT&CK mapping, tests, ownership and cost, and origin.
Test gate
Automated checks on the pull request: a schema check, a logic check that every field exists in the data source's schema, and unit tests for positive and negative cases. It sits before human review.
Alert budget
The number of alerts per week the SOC agrees to take from a detection. The default for a new medium-severity detection is no more than six alerts a week for the whole SOC.
Shadow rollout
The first stage of rollout, in which a detection writes alerts to a log that no analyst reads, so that its volume and precision can be measured against real traffic before a pilot and full release.
Detection debt
The accumulated cost of detections that no longer do what they claim. Five kinds recur: stale, untested, noisy, blind and orphaned. The register that lists them is generated from the records, not kept by hand.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Four kinds of detection debt
  • Put in order: A detection's path into production

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The chapter says a test suite written entirely by the system that drafted the logic proves little. What would count as an independent test in your pipeline?
  2. A repository history shows who wrote and approved each change. How should a team use that history without turning it into a measure of individuals?
  3. The book rests its refusal of Level 4 for detection content on the cost of a silent miss, not on irreversibility. Why is a silent miss harder to notice than a wrong containment?

Exercise · 35 minutes

Taking a supplier-default rule into the repository

Use the eight steps of the practical guide on one rule that exists only as a supplier default in your own SIEM, or on Nordvik Region's rule for repeated failed sign-ins followed by a success. Rank candidate rules by alert volume over the last 90 days and by relevance. Record the supplier's rule identifier and version. Write the detection record: technique mapping, data sources with health checks, severity and origin. Specify at least one positive case, one negative case and a replay over 30 days of your own logs. Set the alert budget from the median weekly volume, name one owner and a review date, and plan a 14-day shadow run beside the supplier version.

Deliverable: A complete detection record for one adopted rule, with tests, alert budget, named owner, review date and staged rollout plan.

Self-test

  1. What is the chapter's central discipline for accepting a detection?

    1. It is accepted when the supplier certifies its coverage of the ATT&CK matrix
    2. It is accepted when a test shows that it fires and a measure shows what it costs in false positives
    3. It is accepted when the drafting assistant reports high confidence in the logic
    4. It is accepted when two analysts agree that the rule looks reasonable
  2. Which kind of detection debt describes a detection whose data source is silent or lacks a required field?

    1. Stale
    2. Orphaned
    3. Noisy
    4. Blind
  3. What status do supplier-held detections have until the contract grants provenance, logic access, tuning rights and test rights?

    1. They are treated as Mode 0 Ambient AI and stay declared rather than verified
    2. They are counted as verified in the coverage map, because the supplier updates them continuously
    3. They are delegated at Level 3 Bounded under the supplier's playbook
    4. They are removed from the coverage map and disabled in the console

Chapter 7 · 105 minutes

Triage Transformed: From Alert Queue to Verified Case

The lesson treats triage, which sits in B3 Investigate and measures B2 Detect. An alert is a claim; AI takes part in five triage tasks and only closure removes the decision from a person. Participants write a closure policy by class, measure triage by escape rate, seeded-incident catch rate, retrospective audit and reopen rate, define the verified case, and stage the debate on whether AI should close alerts.

Learning objectives

  • Explain why closure is delegated by class and not by alert, and list the properties each class needs
  • Draft a closure policy for three alert classes with sampling, seeding and a numeric stop condition
  • Compare the measures of triage quality and explain why closure speed is the wrong one
  • Evaluate the case for concern and the case for calm on AI closure and state where they meet

Key concepts

Closure policy
The answer, given in advance, to the question for which classes of alert an AI system may close without a person reading, on what evidence and with what check afterwards. It is enforced by a policy point outside the model.
Escape rate by class
The share of closed alerts in a class that a later review shows should not have been closed. It is estimated from the sample, which limits how small a rate the default sampling can demonstrate.
Seeded incident
A known case, synthetic or replayed, injected into the stream so that review can be seen to catch it. The default is at least five per class per quarter.
Verified case
The case record, identified as CASE-*, with five properties: provenance of every conclusion, evidence by reference, the class and level of any closure, timestamps that serve the reporting clock, and reproducibility without the AI.
Mode 0 blind spot in managed triage
A provider's or product's AI closes alerts without a decision recorded by the customer. The answer is a contract that gives the class list, the evidence to close, sampling, seeding, notice of model change and a stop right.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: Five triage tasks and how each fails
  • Scenario: The sample finds a closed phishing report

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A reopen rate of zero over many months may mean the review is not real. How would you tell a safe class from an unexamined one?
  2. The chapter proposes keeping a share of triage unassisted, one case in ten at Nordvik Region and one in five at Hansa Mutual. What would decide the right share in your team?
  3. Who should answer when a class closes an intrusion, and how does the chapter divide that between the class owner, the approving authority and the analyst?

Exercise · 35 minutes

A closure policy for three alert classes

Follow the practical guide. From 90 days of closed alerts in your own team, or from the candidates the chapter names (registered internal vulnerability scanner traffic, duplicates of an alert already in an open case), choose three classes that are high in volume, narrow in definition and low in consequence when wrong. For each, write the definition and the evidence to close in structured fields, the named owner, the starting level of Level 1 Assisted for four weeks, a sampling rate of 5 per cent with a floor of 20 a month, the seeding plan and a stop condition written as numbers. Add the list of alerts never closed by an agent and a review date.

Deliverable: A closure policy file with three classes, the never-closed list, owners, levels, sampling, seeding, numeric stop conditions and a review date.

Self-test

  1. Of the five triage tasks in which AI takes part, which one takes the decision away from a person?

    1. Enrichment
    2. Summarisation
    3. Closure
    4. Correlation
  2. In the practical guide, what happens to a class after one confirmed escape of high severity or one missed seeded incident?

    1. The sampling rate is doubled for the following month
    2. It returns to Level 1 Assisted at once, so nothing is closed unread
    3. The class owner is replaced by the SOC lead
    4. It continues at Level 3 Bounded until the class owner's next review date
  3. Which of these may never be closed by an AI system under the two exclusions that belong in every closure policy?

    1. An alert about a tier-0 asset, an executive account or a named person's access to work
    2. An alert raised by traffic from a registered internal vulnerability scanner
    3. A duplicate of an alert that is already held in an open case
    4. An alert that arrives out of hours while the provider is monitoring

Chapter 8 · 105 minutes

Investigate: Hypotheses, Timelines and Evidence with AI

The lesson treats B3 Investigate when AI writes queries, assembles timelines, proposes hypotheses and drafts the narrative. Participants learn how the investigator steers, challenges and verifies; how evidence is kept in three layers with the AI named in the custody record; how hostile content is handled by architecture; what makes a case reproducible without the AI; and the rules for investigating a person's activity, using CASE-HM-1207.

Learning objectives

  • Apply the checks on AI-written queries and AI-assembled timelines that keep an investigation honest
  • Explain the three evidence layers and which actions on evidence an AI system may take at which level
  • Review an AI-assisted case with the five checks before closure
  • Describe the five rules that apply when the activity under investigation is a person's

Key concepts

Three evidence layers
Originals are acquired once, hashed and stored write-once. Working copies and parsed artefacts are derived by named tools. Analysis products are queries, results, timeline entries and narrative, and are the only layer the AI writes to.
Check outside the model
A deterministic script, not the model, opens each event cited in a timeline entry and confirms that timestamp, host, account and action match the record. An entry without a reference is labelled as inference.
Empty result as a claim
A query that returns nothing is evidence of absence only if the query could have found something. The case records the queries that returned nothing and the sources that were not available.
Reproducibility
An investigation is reproducible when a second analyst, given the case record and access to the evidence, can repeat the work without the AI and reach the same conclusions or explain the difference.
Three layers of a narrative
Every narrative separates what is established, with an evidence reference; what is assessed, with the analyst's confidence and reasoning; and what is unknown, with what would resolve it.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: The investigation loop
  • Scenario: Reassurance found in the evidence

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. Verification cannot mean reading everything the AI read. Which of the chapter's checks would you insist on for a conclusion about scope, and which could be sampled?
  2. The chapter says content aimed at an AI reader is itself a finding. How should a team record and use such a finding without overreading it?
  3. At Nordvik Region a second reviewer is scarce, so a case below high severity may be closed provisionally and reproduced within five working days. What does that compromise protect and what does it risk?

Exercise · 40 minutes

Five checks on an AI-assisted case

Take the role of the market reviewer for CASE-HM-1207, the external forwarding rule in a claims correspondence mailbox, or use a closed case of your own with personal data removed. Starting from the evidence manifest and the timeline, not the narrative, run the five checks of the practical guide: grounding and alternatives; independent reproduction of every query behind a conclusion on scope, impact or containment; hostile content and permissions; custody; and scope and proportionality. For each check write what you examined, the result and any correction, such as the UTC stamp that the AI read as local time. State whether the case may be closed and in whose name.

Deliverable: A review record with the five checks, their results, corrections made, the three narrative layers and a closure recommendation.

Self-test

  1. Which layer of evidence is the only one the AI writes to?

    1. Originals, after they have been hashed at acquisition
    2. The evidence manifest, to record its own tool calls
    3. Working copies and parsed artefacts, which named tools derive from the originals
    4. Analysis products: queries, results, timeline entries and narrative
  2. What is the only evidence action that the chapter delegates at Level 3 Bounded?

    1. Acquiring a disk or memory image of a production host with a deterministic tool
    2. Collecting defined artefacts from named sources under a codified playbook
    3. Releasing evidence to a regulator or a CSIRT
    4. Correcting the hashes in the manifest after re-acquisition
  3. What does the chapter require before the activity of a named person is investigated?

    1. A named human authorisation from outside the SOC line that states the purpose and the time window
    2. A decision by the investigation agent that the evidence meets the stated threshold
    3. Continuing observation of the person's behaviour for a fixed period beforehand
    4. A characterisation of the person's motive, drafted by the AI for the HR lead

Chapter 9 · 75 minutes

Threat Hunting Transformed: Hypotheses, Data and Agents

The lesson treats threat hunting, which concerns B1 Anticipate and B2 Detect. AI supplies hypotheses cheaply, drafts and runs queries and clusters anomalies, so the hunter's contribution moves to ranking hypotheses by threat, exposure and existing coverage. Participants study the hunt record HNT-HM-0031, the conversion of findings into detections, the coverage statement for a null result, cost and data-access rules, and the risk of drift from the threat to the data.

Learning objectives

  • Formulate a testable hunt hypothesis that names a behaviour by ATT&CK technique, the data and the population
  • Explain the three fields that carry the weight of a hunt record: query pack, result and coverage statement
  • Plan a four-week hunt cycle with a query budget and an independent query review
  • Write a coverage statement for a hunt that found nothing

Key concepts

Hunt
A bounded, time-boxed search of defined data for evidence of a named adversary behaviour, started from a hypothesis, run by a named threat hunter and recorded so that the result can be reviewed and repeated.
Hunt record
The versioned artefact, identified as HNT-*, that holds the hypothesis and its source, the ATT&CK technique, the data sources and period, the reviewed query pack with costs, the result in events, the coverage statement and the conversion.
Coverage statement
The statement of what a hunt covered and what it did not: which hosts, accounts, log sources and period, which technique, and which variants were not searched because the data does not exist or was too costly to query.
Anomaly rankings as leads
Clustering and outlier scores order events by statistical unusualness. Unusual is not the same as malicious, so the hunter reads the top ten and a random sample of ten below the line.
Drift
The quiet risk that a team with good tools and plentiful data hunts what the data makes easy, not what the threat makes likely. A hunt that cannot name its source is a sign of it.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: A four-week hunt cycle
  • Match: The parts of a hunt record

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A model summary of an empty result set reads fluently and carries no information about whether the query was right. How would your team make a null result trustworthy?
  2. Nordvik Region uses each hunt as a test of its provider's detections. What does that tell the Region that an ordinary service report would not?
  3. Hansa Mutual keeps scheduled query packs at Level 2 Supervised although a run that changes nothing would qualify for Level 3. What reasons could justify staying below the ceiling?

Exercise · 30 minutes

A hunt record and its coverage statement

Take one hypothesis from your last intelligence report, or Nordvik Region's first hunt HNT-NR-0001 on abuse of a valid account against the identity provider in an administration path. Write the hunt record skeleton: the hypothesis as a statement that can be false, its source, who proposed and who adopted it, the ATT&CK technique, the data sources, population and period, and who authorised the scope. Set the query budget using the default that no query runs on the full period before a seven-day sample. Then write the coverage statement in advance: what will be searched, what will not, and which variants the available data cannot show. Name the reviewer of the query pack, who is not the drafter.

Deliverable: A hunt record skeleton with hypothesis, scope, budget, reviewer and a four-part coverage statement, ready for a four-week cycle.

Self-test

  1. According to the chapter, where does the hunter's judgement sit once AI proposes hypotheses cheaply?

    1. In typing queries faster than an assistant can draft them
    2. In approving every anomaly cluster that the SIEM or EDR product ranks highest
    3. In ranking hypotheses by threat, exposure and existing coverage
    4. In disabling suspicious accounts as soon as they are found
  2. What does a hunt that finds nothing establish?

    1. That the behaviour is absent from the estate
    2. That the detection covering the technique can be retired
    3. That the hypothesis came from an unreliable source
    4. That nothing was found by these queries, in this data, over this period
  3. What is the fixed end of a hunt finding that reveals a gap in detection?

    1. A detection with a passing test, or a dated repeat of the hunt with a reason
    2. An immediate containment action taken by the hunting agent
    3. A ranking of the analysts who missed the behaviour
    4. A request to the grant authority to raise the hunting agent to Level 3 Bounded

Chapter 10 · 120 minutes

Respond: Playbooks, Bounded Containment and the Stop Path

The lesson treats B4 Respond. Response actions are classified by reversibility into AC-0 to AC-4, each with a default ceiling. Participants learn the five questions that set a ceiling, the contents of a playbook manifest, what makes Level 3 Bounded real, how a stop path is built outside the system it stops and drilled, the roles of break-glass and the incident commander, and the containment ledger, through the incident INC-HM-2027-0455.

Learning objectives

  • Classify response actions by reversibility and set the ceiling with the five questions of the practical guide
  • Describe what a playbook manifest contains and why a policy decision point outside the model must enforce it
  • Design and drill a stop path that does not run inside the system it stops
  • Distinguish stopping from reversing and explain the role of the containment ledger in the recovery handover

Key concepts

Playbook manifest
The codified, pre-approved response, identified as PBK-*. It names the trigger, the corroboration required, the action and its class, the limits, the approver, the rollback and the stop path. Everything not listed is denied.
Independent corroboration
At least two sources that do not share a data path must agree before a Level 3 action. Two detections that read the same identity log are one source seen twice.
Stop path
The means by which a person halts a system's further actions. It must not run inside the system it stops: for a SOC agent it revokes the agent's identity at the identity provider and freezes its write policy at the endpoint-detection console.
Stopping versus reversing
A stop halts further actions and does not undo those already taken. Reversal is a separate step carried out by a person, and restart is a deliberate decision by the owner.
Containment ledger
The handover to recovery, generated from the case record: every action taken, by whom or which system, at which level, under which playbook, with its rollback state, the evidence preserved and the credentials rotated.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Which action class?
  • Scenario: The isolation that interrupted a rollout

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A model that scores a host at 0.97 has not changed what isolating a production database would cost if the score were wrong. How does this change the way your team talks about confidence?
  2. A commander who approves every Level 3 action has turned the playbook back into Level 2. What should the incident commander spend attention on instead?
  3. Nordvik Region's stop path for its provider's AI is a contractual instruction with a 15-minute target. What must be true for such an instruction to count as a stop path?

Exercise · 40 minutes

Drilling the stop path on the table

Run the stop-path drill of the practical guide as a tabletop for your own agent or for Hansa Mutual's investigation agent HM-SEC-001. Assign the agent operator, the holder who invokes the stop and the SOC lead as observer. Describe the harmless scenario in the pre-production mirror in which the agent proposes a permitted action every thirty seconds. Write down where the independent mechanism sits and confirm it is not in the SOAR layer. Define the two times to be recorded, the attempt of a second action after the stop, and the restart test with a non-owner. Set the target time, and record any failure as a finding with an owner and a re-test date.

Deliverable: A stop-path drill record with roles, mechanism, target time, the two measured times, denial and restart checks, and findings with owners.

Self-test

  1. What does the default ceiling of a response action class follow, according to the chapter?

    1. The confidence score the model assigns to the alert
    2. The effect of a wrong action
    3. The seniority of the analyst on shift
    4. The number of detections that fired in the last hour
  2. In the incident INC-HM-2027-0455, what weakness of playbook version 1.2.0 allowed a legitimate rollout step to be contained?

    1. The playbook allowed the agent to wipe the workstation
    2. The stop control ran inside the SOAR layer and failed when the shift lead used it
    3. The agent held break-glass access to production hosts
    4. The two corroborating sources were allowed to share a data path
  3. What is the default ceiling for AC-4 actions such as wiping a host or notifying a regulator?

    1. Level 1 Assisted: the system drafts and a named person acts
    2. Level 2 Supervised, with each action approved by the duty analyst on shift
    3. Level 3 Bounded inside a playbook with a rate limit
    4. Level 0 Advisory, with no drafting permitted

Chapter 11 · 105 minutes

Learn: Post-Incident Review, Purple Teaming and Detection Debt

The lesson treats B5 Learn and the parts of B2 Detect and B4 Respond that a review changes. A post-incident review is engineering: blameless, evidence-based and ending in at most three changes with owners, dates and re-tests. Participants run the 90-minute method, apply the five rules for AI in the review, follow the finding-to-control path and the purple loop, manage detection and playbook debt, and measure learning, using PIR-HM-0455.

Learning objectives

  • Facilitate a blameless review that ends in at most three committed changes with re-tests
  • Apply the five rules that keep an AI-drafted review honest
  • Trace a finding through the six stages from opening to control classification
  • Assess detection and playbook debt against thresholds and explain the measures of learning and how each is gamed

Key concepts

Blameless review
A review that asks what made the actions of people and systems reasonable at the time and treats the conditions as the object of change. It lists contributing conditions, not causes, and names nobody as a cause.
Finding
A statement that a control, a detection, a playbook, a mandate, a contract term or a skill did not hold in a stated condition. It is closed only when the re-test passes, not when the change is merged.
Re-test designed at opening
The re-test is defined when the finding is opened, not when the change is merged, because a re-test written after the fix tends to test the fix.
Purple loop
The joint loop between the red team and the blue team: an exercise yields techniques tried and whether a detection fired, and every detection built from it carries the exercise scenario as a regression test.
Playbook and mandate debt
A rollback or stop path not exercised for 180 days lowers the autonomy ceiling one level until exercised; a mandate past its review date makes the agent's permissions lapse at the policy decision point.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: From finding to verified control
  • Match: How each measure of learning is gamed

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A draft timeline that needs no corrections over several reviews is a signal to seed an error. Why might a perfect draft be a warning rather than a success?
  2. The chapter concludes that the rate of new detections is bounded by the rate at which the team can test them. What follows for a team whose drafting assistant is very productive?
  3. Nordvik Region learns mainly through contracts and the few rules it owns. What does a re-test look like when the change is a contract term and not code?

Exercise · 45 minutes

A blameless review with three changes

Run the 90-minute method in compressed form on the incident of 2027-04-12 at Hansa Mutual's Polish service centre, where a legitimate scheduler rollout was contained, or on an incident of your own. Appoint a facilitator who was not the incident commander and a scribe. State the ground rules, walk the timeline once and record every correction. For each decision point, list what the person or system knew and the contributing conditions. Choose at most three changes; give each an owner who is a role, a due date, the artefact it changes and the re-test that re-runs the original scenario. Record what the team decided not to do and why, and mark any section an AI system drafted.

Deliverable: A post-incident review record with corrected timeline, contributing conditions, three findings with owner, date, artefact and re-test, and decisions not taken.

Self-test

  1. When is a finding closed, according to the rule the chapter takes over from AI Red Team, Chapter 26?

    1. When the pull request with the change has been merged by the artefact owner
    2. When the SOC lead has signed the review record
    3. When the re-test that re-runs the original scenario has passed
    4. When thirty days have passed without a recurrence
  2. What is the default consequence when a mandate passes its review date?

    1. The agent's permissions lapse at the policy decision point
    2. The agent continues for 90 days while the review is scheduled
    3. The mandate is marked declared in the control catalogue
    4. The autonomy ceiling drops one level until the next drill
  3. Which of the chapter's five rules governs what an AI system may read when it drafts a review?

    1. It may read any log the analysts can reach, to find missing facts
    2. It may read the evidence pack and nothing else; unsupported statements are struck out
    3. It may read earlier performance assessments of the analysts who were involved
    4. It may read the pack and decide which three changes the team commits to

Module 3 · Part III · The Blue Team's AI Team

Part III treats the blue team's own AI. It starts with the analyst's personal use of assistants in Modes 1 to 3, moves to a standing team of narrow agents under mandate manifests with a human conductor, shows how review stays real when the analyst depends on the AI to read the data, and ends with the defence of the defenders' AI as a tier-0 asset. Participants leave with an acceptable-use sheet, a mandate manifest, a seeded-incident programme and a pre-production checklist.

Chapter 12 · 75 minutes

The Analyst's Own Use of AI: Querying, Drafting and Summarising in Modes 1 to 3

The lesson treats the analyst's own use of conversational assistants, embedded assistants and agentic work tools, which touches all five blue team functions. Participants classify data into four classes and restrict routes by class, learn what never goes to any assistant, record AI use as a pointer in the case record, hold the line between assistance and delegation, respond to shadow AI and agree the logging terms with employee representatives.

Learning objectives

  • Classify SOC data as public, internal, confidential or restricted and assign permitted routes to each class
  • List the content that goes to no assistant whatever the route and explain why
  • Distinguish assistance from delegation using the four places where the line blurs
  • Draft a one-page acceptable-use sheet with routes, a never-paste list, the record and the unassisted share

Key concepts

Route
A pairing of a tool, a mode and a hosting arrangement. The policy states, per data class, which routes are allowed and the highest degree of delegation permitted on each, and the tooling enforces it.
AI-use record
A pointer in the case record, not a transcript: which step used an assistant, by which route and mode, for which data class and purpose, how the output was used and what it was checked against.
Assistance versus delegation
Assistance means the analyst decides what is asked, reads the output in full, owns the result and takes every action. Anything that acts on standing authority is an agent with a mandate.
Shadow AI
The use of AI tools the organisation has not approved or does not know about. The remedy is a better approved route, a fast exception path and a culture in which disclosure is a safe act.
Unassisted share
The share of cases worked without an assistant so that skill survives: by default one case in five, and one in two for analysts in their first six months; one in ten at Nordvik Region.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Which route may this take?
  • Scenario: An analyst owns up

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The approved assistant may refuse anything that looks like a security question. What would make the approved route the best one for security work in your organisation?
  2. A log entry of 'used as drafted' is acceptable only with a recorded check. What counts as a sufficient check for a ticket summary, and what for a drafted query?
  3. The AI-use log protects the analyst as well as the organisation. Under what terms would analysts in your team see it that way?

Exercise · 30 minutes

A one-page acceptable-use sheet for analysts

Follow the five steps of the practical guide. Fix the four data classes and name the data that is always restricted: alert content, case content, personal data and evidence. Mark each available route as allowed or not allowed per class, including a separate line for embedded assistants in the SIEM or endpoint console. Write the never-paste list in no more than eight lines. State the record: what the case tool captures, what the analyst adds, how long prompts are kept and that no individual measure is reported. State the unassisted share, name the exception route and put the review date on the page. For Nordvik Region, keep the embedded assistant disabled as the chapter describes.

Deliverable: A one-page sheet with a class-by-route table, the never-paste list, recording rules, the unassisted share, the exception route and a review date.

Self-test

  1. Why do the safeguards for Modes 1 to 3 rest on the analyst's discipline and the tooling around it?

    1. Because these tools are exempt from the organisation's data classification
    2. Because the vendors of such tools accept accountability for what the output is used for
    3. Because in these modes the AI acts with the analyst's own identity and permissions
    4. Because the AI Act forbids logging of conversational assistants
  2. Which of the following goes to no assistant, whatever the route?

    1. Credentials and secrets, including those found inside evidence
    2. A public threat report that arrived overnight
    3. Field names and types from the SIEM schema
    4. A published advisory from the national CSIRT, summarised on an enterprise tier
  3. A Mode 3 work tool runs a command that changes an endpoint. How does the chapter classify this?

    1. As assistance, provided the analyst reads the tool's output in full afterwards
    2. As a Level 0 Advisory action that needs no record
    3. As shadow AI that must be reported to the incident process
    4. As B4 Respond, which falls under the playbook manifests of Chapter 10

Chapter 13 · 105 minutes

An AI Agent Team for the SOC: Skills, Mandates and Containment

The lesson treats a standing team of narrow AI agents in the SOC, each with its own identity, tools, data and level, and a human conductor who answers for the team. Participants learn which agents a SOC needs and which it should not build, how mandate manifests and containment profiles are enforced outside the agents, how the chain of accountability holds across hand-offs, and how an agent is introduced in four steps, run without and retired.

Learning objectives

  • Explain why Hansa Mutual staffs four agents and a critique agent but neither a response agent nor a manager agent
  • Describe the contents of a mandate manifest and the four identity rules for SOC agents
  • Plan the introduction of an agent in four steps with a decision and exit criteria for each
  • Design the degraded states and the retirement sequence for an agent

Key concepts

Mandate manifest
The SOC's written mandate for an agent, identified as MND-*: purpose, permitted tasks, the level per action class, who approves, the budget, the escalation rules and the list of what the agent may never do. The platform enforces it outside the agent.
Conductor
The named human, at Hansa Mutual the group SOC lead, who answers for the agent team as a whole: that the sum of delegations is known, measured and stoppable.
Deterministic pipeline
The orchestration in which an event arrives, a rule selects the agent, the agent writes a structured result to the case and the next rule selects the next step. No agent assigns work to another or approves another's output.
Circuit breaker
A limit that lowers an agent's level automatically, without waiting for a meeting. For example, a sampled closure that proves to be an escape drops that class from Level 3 to Level 2 until the class owner reviews it.
Degraded mode
The ability to work without the agents. Four states are planned: class paused, agent stopped, team stopped and platform down, each with a runbook step, an owner and a target time.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: Retiring an agent
  • Match: Who answers for what in the chain

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The Five Eyes guidance recommends a secondary agent to validate tasks, yet the SOC departs from it for approval. What is the argument, and where would you still use a second agent?
  2. The detection-drafting agent holds a Mode 5 identity although it only drafts. What does recording the true mode protect against?
  3. The chapter concludes that an agent team is acceptable to the extent that a person who does not depend on it can stop it and the people left can still do the work. How would you test both halves?

Exercise · 40 minutes

A mandate manifest and a four-step introduction

Choose one agent your SOC might introduce, or Nordvik Region's triage assistant NR-SEC-001, which the chapter governs with MND-NR-SOC-01. Write the mandate manifest: purpose, usage mode, functions, owner, operators, authority, data it may read and where models run, the level per action class with the playbook that bounds any Level 3 action, the budget, the escalation rules, the personal-data entry with team-level reporting and the list of what it may never do. Then plan the introduction in four steps from shadow mode at Level 0 Advisory to Level 3 Bounded for one named class, with duration, evidence and exit criteria per step. For Nordvik, keep Level 1 as the ceiling.

Deliverable: A mandate manifest and a four-step introduction plan with a recorded decision, evidence and exit criteria for each step.

Self-test

  1. Why does the SOC in the chapter not build a manager agent to oversee the other agents?

    1. Because a manager agent would need a larger budget than the mandate manifests allow
    2. Because overseeing the last step is not overseeing the chain, and approval is a human act
    3. Because the AI Act lists manager agents among prohibited practices
    4. Because the hunting agent already assigns work to the other agents
  2. What is the first step of introducing a SOC agent in the practical guide?

    1. Level 2 Supervised for one quarter, with a person approving each proposed action
    2. Level 3 Bounded for a single closure class with a review at 90 days
    3. Shadow mode at Level 0 Advisory for four weeks, with no effect on the queue
    4. Level 1 Assisted for eight weeks with the agent's output in the case
  3. Where does the mechanism for stopping the whole agent team sit?

    1. At the identity provider and the SOAR connector, outside the agent platform
    2. Inside the agent platform, as an instruction in each agent's prompt
    3. In the triage agent, which pauses the other agents on request
    4. In the model provider's console, where the supplier's on-call engineer withdraws the model

Chapter 14 · 105 minutes

Verifying What the AI Concludes: Review for Soundness When the Analyst Depends on the AI

The lesson treats verification when the analyst depends on the AI to read the data, and concerns B2 Detect, B3 Investigate and B4 Respond. Participants define soundness in advance with six criteria, review without starting from the AI's answer, reproduce the key fact by another route, design seeded errors and seeded incidents with a stop rule, read oversight-quality metrics together and keep review real at three times the volume.

Learning objectives

  • Explain the three forms of dependence and why automation bias makes designed verification necessary
  • Apply the six soundness criteria to a triage verdict, a timeline and a containment proposal
  • Design a seeded-incident programme with a catch-rate threshold and a stop rule
  • Interpret a set of oversight-quality metrics and propose measures that keep review real at volume

Key concepts

Soundness criteria
Six criteria defined before the conclusion arrives: grounding, completeness, alternatives considered, stated confidence, reversibility and stability. They belong in the mandate manifest and the closure policy so the pipeline rejects output that fails them.
Key fact
The one fact on which a conclusion depends. The reviewer reproduces it by a route the AI did not take, re-running the query by hand or confirming it from a second source the adversary could not have altered.
Critique agent
A second AI that reads the evidence and the first agent's conclusion and flags unsupported claims and missing alternatives. It runs on a different model family, raises questions and never gives an approval.
Caught-seed rate
Seeded faults caught over seeded faults injected, read with its counts. The programme starts with a threshold of 0.80 over a rolling quarter; below it, extension of delegation for the class is frozen.
Back-pressure
When a reviewer's cap of open proposals is reached, 12 by default, a Level 2 class drops to Level 1: the agent keeps summarising but stops proposing until the queue clears. Pressure goes to the agent, not the person.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: Soundness of a triage verdict
  • Scenario: The cap is reached at night

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A model's stated confidence is part of its output and not a measurement of its accuracy. What should a reviewer accept as a basis for confidence instead?
  2. With five seeds in a month a single miss moves the monthly rate by 0.20. How should small numbers be reported so that nobody reads more into them than they hold?
  3. The chapter places accountability for a missed closure first with those who designed the review and then with the person who approved. What would your organisation need to record to make that distinction visible?

Exercise · 40 minutes

Starting a seeded-incident programme

Follow the practical guide for one class that AI handles at Level 2 or Level 3 in your SOC, or for Hansa Mutual's closure classes. Name the SOC lead as owner and a seed owner who does not review seeded cases. Write the reporting rules to agree with employee representatives: team and class level only, no individual figures, no use in appraisal or discipline. Specify the first ten seeds as six seeded errors in AI summaries and four seeded incidents, the injection of five a month at random times, the registry tag and the no-action path. Define the outcomes to record, the rolling-quarter catch rate, the threshold of 0.80 and the stop rule, and how misses are analysed as design questions.

Deliverable: A programme specification with roles, agreed reporting rules, ten seed descriptions, injection plan, catch-rate threshold, stop rule and miss-analysis procedure.

Self-test

  1. What is the cheapest correction for anchoring, the strongest effect of automation bias, according to the chapter?

    1. Asking the agent to state its confidence as a number before the analyst reviews it
    2. Replacing the reviewer after every missed seed
    3. Doubling the number of reviewers on each shift
    4. Changing the order of work: the analyst forms a provisional view before opening the AI's conclusion
  2. Why does the critique agent run on a different model family from the agent it critiques?

    1. Because agents on one model family may share blind spots and fail together
    2. Because a second model family is cheaper to run at night
    3. Because the works agreement requires two suppliers for every tool
    4. Because the critique agent needs write access to the case that the first model lacks
  3. In Hansa Mutual's oversight report for the third quarter of 2027, how does a reader learn that the caught-seed rate of 0.86 is fragile?

    1. The report omits the number of seeds injected
    2. The report notes beside the figure that two more misses would breach it
    3. The report ranks the analysts who missed the four seeds
    4. The report shows that the rejection rate fell to zero while volume tripled

Chapter 15 · 105 minutes

Defending the Defenders' AI: Poisoned Telemetry, Hostile Tickets and the SOC as Tier 0

The lesson treats the defence of the defenders' AI across all five blue team functions. Participants classify inputs into trust classes T0 to T3, design against four consequence classes of a manipulated agent, place controls outside the model, protect detections and feedback against tampering, treat the SOC platform as tier 0, govern the supply chain of security AI and plan authorised red teaming, with CP-HM-SOC-01 and FND-HM-2027-014 as examples.

Learning objectives

  • Classify the inputs of a SOC AI capability into the trust classes T0 Own, T1 Telemetry, T2 Submitted and T3 Published
  • Explain the four consequence classes of a manipulated agent and which control bounds each
  • Review a new SOC AI capability with the ten-question pre-production checklist
  • Describe what treating the SOC platform as tier 0 means for identity, change, recovery and personal data

Key concepts

Trust classes T0 to T3
A classification of every input by who can influence the text: T0 Own from the SOC's deterministic tooling, T1 Telemetry with attacker-chosen fields, T2 Submitted by any person, T3 Published by third parties. The class travels with the data.
Four consequence classes
What a manipulated agent can cause, described by effect: suppression of an alert, misdirection of the analyst, disclosure of case data or credentials, and action on the estate that the adversary wanted.
Containment profile
The permission manifest the policy decision point reads for an agent, such as CP-HM-SOC-01: its input channels with trust classes and each tool with action, reversibility, level and scope.
Canary
A decoy that no legitimate process touches, such as a ticket with instruction-like text addressed to the agent, a decoy credential or a decoy tool. Touching it raises an alert to a person and exposes a steered agent.
SOC as tier 0
The SOC platform is among the assets whose compromise gives control of everything else, so it has separate administrative identities, change only by reviewed pull request and recovery that does not depend on itself.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Who could have written this input?
  • Scenario: The note that lost its label

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. T1 Telemetry is the class that most surprises teams who treat logs as ground truth. Which log fields in your estate are strings that an outside actor controls?
  2. The controls bound suppression, action and disclosure but not what a manipulated agent can make an analyst believe. How do Chapters 14 and 15 divide the work between them?
  3. Nordvik Region's exposure is contractual and Hansa Mutual's is architectural. Which of the two is harder to verify, and what evidence would you ask for in each case?

Exercise · 40 minutes

Pre-production checklist for a SOC AI capability

Take a SOC AI capability your team plans to enable, an agent, a copilot or a vendor feature, or use Hansa Mutual's investigation agent as documented in CP-HM-SOC-01. Answer the ten questions of the practical guide with evidence: inputs and their trust classes; tools with action class, reversibility and scope; the level per action class with no Level 4; enforcement by a policy decision point outside the model; the deterministic source that corroborates each conclusion; the egress policy; credentials with lifetime and revocation time; a canary on each input channel; the holder of the stop right and the last stop drill; and the exit. Mark each answer verified or declared, and give every declared answer an expiry date.

Deliverable: A completed ten-question checklist with evidence references, a verified or declared status per answer, expiry dates and a scheduled red-team exercise.

Self-test

  1. Into which trust class does the chapter place a web log or a command line recorded by the organisation's own systems?

    1. T0 Own, because the organisation's systems produced the record
    2. T3 Published, because adversaries may seed the content
    3. T1 Telemetry, because the record contains attacker-chosen fields
    4. T2 Submitted, because a person wrote the text without technical integrity
  2. Which consequence of a manipulated agent do the controls outside the model not bound, leaving it to the review of Chapter 14?

    1. Disclosure, which is held by deny-by-default egress from the agent's runtime
    2. Misdirection, the steering of what the analyst believes
    3. Action, which is held by the policy decision point
    4. Suppression, which is caught by sampling
  3. What status does a control on the SOC's AI have if it has not been tested, under the standard the chapter takes from AI Threat, Chapter 30?

    1. Failed, until a supplier certifies it
    2. Verified, if the design was reviewed by the security architect
    3. Exempt, if the capability runs at Level 1 Assisted
    4. Declared, and not verified

Module 4 · Part IV · The Team in the Organisation

Part IV places the team in its organisation. It compares in-house, managed, hybrid and sovereign operating models and makes a provider's AI visible by contract, redesigns the team after the tier-1 pyramid, assigns the decisions to contain, isolate, disclose and stop to named holders with response times, reads NIS 2, DORA, the Cyber Resilience Act, the GDPR and the AI Act as clocks, records and named people, and replaces closure-rate targets with measures that carry gaming checks.

Chapter 16 · 105 minutes

Operating Models: In-House, Managed, Hybrid and Sovereign Security Operations

The lesson treats the operating models open to a European organisation, in-house, MSSP, MDR and hybrid, with follow-the-sun and sovereign variants, across all five blue team functions. Participants learn what AI changes in the choice, what must be kept in every model, how the six terms of annex MS-2 make a provider's AI visible, what DORA, NIS 2 and the GDPR ask of the arrangement, how sovereignty is tested, how to procure on evidence and how to test exit.

Learning objectives

  • Compare the four operating models by who holds detection content, triage, the case record and the containment decision
  • Explain the five things that stay with the organisation whichever model it chooses
  • Draft the six terms of an annex that makes a provider's AI visible and checkable
  • Design a one-day switch-off test that makes exit a tested capability

Key concepts

Hybrid model
The organisation keeps some functions and buys others. In the Nordvik pattern it keeps detection content, the incident commander role and the case record, and buys round-the-clock monitoring and first triage.
Unrecorded delegation
The third change AI brings to operating models: when a provider's AI closes or acts on the customer's behalf, it does so at a level of autonomy nobody on the customer's side has decided, and the customer's record does not show who.
Six terms of annex MS-2
Levels and actions, quarterly sampling, audit rights, evidence for every closure or action, tuning and test rights, and 20 working days' notice of model change, plus conditions for data and exit.
Four properties of sovereignty
Sovereignty as verifiable properties, not a location: knowing where workloads run, which law governs them, being able to move them and being able to continue if a provider fails.
Tested exit
A one-day switch-off in which the customer revokes the provider's credentials, runs the manual queue from the day-one runbook and measures time to first triage of a seeded alert, visible sources, untakeable actions and time to restore.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: Sovereignty as four testable questions
  • Scenario: A new closure class by newsletter

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A model that keeps detection content in the provider's platform produces an estate only the provider can read, whatever the contract says about ownership. How would you test ownership in practice?
  2. Nordvik Region's six analysts cannot run the manual queue for a full night, so its exit test is partial. What should an organisation do when it fails its own exit test?
  3. The chapter's procurement criteria reward the ability to be checked, with price weighted so that it cannot outweigh the others. What resistance would you expect, and from whom?

Exercise · 40 minutes

The annex that makes a provider's AI visible

Write an annex to a managed-service agreement for your own provider or for Nordvik Region's agreement NR-2025-044. First write the questions you would put to the provider in writing: which AI acts, on which classes, with what actions, at which model version and in which location. Then list the classes and set a level for each, with Level 3 Bounded only for narrow, reversible classes whose evidence to close is stated in fields. Name the evidence to close, set the quarterly sample, write the notice period for model, rule or threshold changes, the stop right with a time target, the audit and data terms and the exit schedule. Name the list of what the provider's AI may never do.

Deliverable: A draft annex with the six terms, a class list with levels and evidence fields, a never list, a stop right with a time target and an exit schedule.

Self-test

  1. Which of these does the chapter say must stay with the organisation whichever operating model it chooses?

    1. Round-the-clock monitoring and first triage of every alert, including at night
    2. The provider's closure rules and the models behind them
    3. Detection content, with its logic in a repository the organisation owns
    4. The night shift at a second site in another time zone
  2. What does the sixth term of annex MS-2 require?

    1. 20 working days' notice before a model, rule or threshold affecting closure changes
    2. A fixed price per closed alert for the duration of the agreement
    3. That the provider's AI runs at Level 4 Autonomous out of hours
    4. That all telemetry and closure evidence is deleted after each quarterly sample is returned
  3. Why does the evidence to close for bulk mail in annex MS-2 include the gateway click log?

    1. Because annex MS-1 already required the provider to return it with every closure
    2. Because the closure of CASE-NR-0231 rested on a sender-reputation score although a recipient had clicked
    3. Because click logs contain no personal data and are cheap to store
    4. Because the email gateway vendor refuses to disclose reputation scores

Chapter 17 · 90 minutes

Team Design and Roles: After the Tier-1 Pyramid

The lesson treats the human team around the agents, across all five blue team functions. Participants trace where the functions of tier 1 go, learn the roles that grow and the three new roles, compare the pyramid, diamond and flat shapes, write a role as a versioned charter with ceilings and prohibitions, design rotas for the night when agents act, and find the empty and double cells at the seams to neighbouring teams.

Learning objectives

  • Explain where each tier-1 function goes when triage is largely automated and which role carries it
  • Compare the pyramid, the diamond and the flat team by strength, weakness and fit
  • Draft a role charter with decision rights as verbs with limits, a ceiling and a list of what the role may not do
  • Trace recent incidents through a role map to find empty and double cells at the seams

Key concepts

Diamond
A team shape with few tier 1 posts, a wide middle of analysts, investigation leads and detection engineers, and a narrow top. Its weak point is the bottom: a narrow entry rung that needs an apprenticeship by design.
Role charter
A role written as a versioned artefact, identified as ROLE-*, beside the code. Decision rights are verbs with limits, ceilings are stated per role, and what the role may not do is part of the charter.
Agent operator
The person who watches Mode 5 agents and may revoke their credentials, pause an agent or freeze its write policy. The operator cannot raise an agent's level or widen its mandate.
Class owner
A senior analyst who owns the closure of one alert class at Level 3: reads the sampling, tunes the definition with the detection engineer and pauses the class when an escape appears, but cannot raise its level alone.
Seam
A place where the blue team's roles meet another team's roles: the security architect, platform engineering, IT operations and the business. Incidents go wrong where a handover assumes the other side holds a right it does not.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Pyramid, diamond or flat?
  • Match: What crosses each seam

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The chapter says the count of posts is the wrong starting point, because the functions that remain differ in kind from the ones that went. What would be the right starting point for a staffing conversation?
  2. Hansa Mutual's plan commits that no post closes until its holder has been offered a place in the new roles. What makes such a commitment credible to a works council?
  3. Conway's law suggests the team's structure shapes the detections, playbooks and mandates it builds. Where can you see your own organisation chart in your security tooling?

Exercise · 35 minutes

Drawing the role map and testing it on incidents

Follow the five steps of the practical guide in compressed form. List the people in your team and the roles each plays in the five functions, including part-time roles such as class owner, intelligence analyst, purple team coordinator and evaluation engineer. Write one line per role: what it decides, within what time and up to which level. Mark the seams to the architect, the platform team, IT operations and the business and name the counterpart. Then take three recent incidents or near misses, at least one in which an agent or a provider's AI took part, list the decisions made and find the role that held each right. Mark empty cells, double cells and decisions taken without a charter.

Deliverable: A role map by function with ceilings, named seam counterparts, three traced incidents and a list of charter changes with a review date within 90 days.

Self-test

  1. According to the chapter's table, where does the tier-1 function 'learning what normal looks like' go when triage is automated?

    1. To the triage agent, which records it in its mandate
    2. To the managed provider, under the framework agreement
    3. To the incident commander, during major incidents
    4. It must be designed in, as an apprenticeship route
  2. What may the agent operator do under the default role ceilings?

    1. Raise an agent's level when the queue is long
    2. Revoke credentials, pause an agent and freeze its write policy
    3. Approve the disabling of a named person's account inside a playbook
    4. Widen an agent's mandate during an incident
  3. What was Nordvik Region's first move in redesigning its team, recorded in AIDR-0719?

    1. It converted one analyst post into detection engineering and shared an agent operator role with the platform team
    2. It moved four tier 1 posts into detection engineering and investigation lead roles over two years
    3. It replaced its six analysts with a fully managed service
    4. It built a diamond with a second site for the night shift

Chapter 18 · 120 minutes

Decision Rights and Escalation: Who May Contain, Isolate and Disclose

The lesson assigns the decisions around a response, for B3 Investigate and B4 Respond: who may isolate a production system, disable an account, take a service offline, notify a regulator or affected people, refuse a ransom or stop an agent, and how fast. Participants work with five response tiers, a table of ten decisions, the design of stop and disclosure rights, the escalation packet for agents, and a decision-rights file that holds across several legal regimes.

Learning objectives

  • Assign ten incident decisions to named holders with deputies, response times and inform lists
  • Explain the response tiers and the rules by which a question moves between them
  • Describe how the stop right is made cheaper than the right to continue
  • Run a tabletop that measures time to acknowledge and time to decide and file the misses as findings

Key concepts

Decision right
A requirement with a holder, a deputy and a second deputy, a response time, an evidence standard and a record. It is set from the speed of the threat and the shortest applicable clock.
Response tiers
Five tiers decide in seconds to hours: playbook, on-call, incident commander, executive and management body. The lowest tier that can decide with the evidence decides, and the management body approves the file in advance.
Timeout rule
A page not acknowledged within the response time goes to the deputy by an automatic timer, never by a person remembering.
Escalation packet
A structured packet, not a message: the subject, the proposed action and its class, the evidence with data paths marked independent or shared, the evidence pointing the other way, the cost of waiting, the status of the clocks and the holder.
Three disclosure decisions
The file separates classification of the event, the decision to notify and the approval of the text. AI may propose classification and draft at Level 1 Assisted; a named executive holds the decision.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: The response tiers
  • Scenario: A production host and an unreachable holder

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A stop needs one holder and no justification before it takes effect, and an unnecessary stop costs the organisation and not the individual. What would have to change in your culture for people to use that right?
  2. Revoking a session is reversible containment of a credential, while disabling an account decides about a person's access to work. Where exactly would you draw that line in your identity system?
  3. The management body approves the file in advance and is informed; it does not sit in the incident path. How does that square with its accountability under NIS 2 Article 20 and DORA Article 5?

Exercise · 50 minutes

A decision-rights table tested in a tabletop

Start from the ten decisions D1 to D10 of the chapter. For your organisation, or for Nordvik Region with its named on-call manager and regional director, assign each decision its action class and ceiling, one holder by role, a deputy and a second deputy, and a response time worked back from the shortest clock, using 5, 10, 30, 120 and 240 minutes as defaults. Write the evidence standard and the inform list for D4, D5 and D7, and the timeout rule. Then run a tabletop: inject a scenario at a minute the holders do not know, page the holders for D4 and D7, and measure time to acknowledge and time to decide. File every miss as a finding with an owner and a re-test date.

Deliverable: A decision-rights table for ten decisions and a tabletop result with measured times for at least two decisions and findings for each miss.

Self-test

  1. Who is the default holder of decision D5, disabling a staff account, and within what time?

    1. The triage agent, within seconds, inside a playbook
    2. The duty analyst, within 5 minutes, at Level 2
    3. The incident commander, within 10 minutes
    4. The executive board, within 240 minutes
  2. What did Hansa Mutual's tabletop on decision D7 measure against its targets?

    1. Acknowledgement after 5 minutes and a decision after 20 minutes, both inside target
    2. A stop of the agent team in 57 seconds against a target of 120 seconds
    3. No acknowledgement at all, because the holder was not on the rota
    4. Acknowledgement after 18 minutes against a target of 10, and a decision after 51 minutes against 30
  3. Under the chapter's rules, what moves an unanswered page to the deputy?

    1. An automatic timer when the response time passes without acknowledgement
    2. A phone call from the duty analyst, made when the holder is known to be unreachable
    3. A decision by the management body at its next meeting
    4. A proposal from the investigation agent to change the holder

Chapter 19 · 105 minutes

Regulation as Constraint: NIS 2, DORA, CRA, GDPR, the AI Act and the Reporting Clock

The lesson reads regulation as a design constraint on B3 Investigate, B4 Respond and B5 Learn. Participants map NIS 2 Articles 20, 21 and 23, DORA Articles 5 and 17 to 19, Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 Article 14, GDPR Articles 32 to 34 and 88 and the AI Act Articles 4, 14, 26 and 73 to what the team must show, build the incident clock from two awareness timestamps, design evidence, and handle employee data in monitoring. None of it is legal advice.

Learning objectives

  • Map the instruments and articles the chapter names to what a blue team must be able to show for each
  • Build an incident clock with two awareness timestamps, an owner and a deputy per clock and reasons for closing
  • Explain what a management body may delegate and what it may not, as the chapter reads NIS 2 Article 20 and DORA Article 5
  • Design the separation between the evidence view and the management view of an analyst action log

Key concepts

Reporting clock
The interval between the moment an organisation is regarded as aware of an incident and the moment each notification is due. One incident can open several clocks that start at different moments and have different owners.
Two awareness timestamps
The case system writes first_flag_at when a detection fires or a provider's page arrives and human_confirmed_at when a named analyst confirms. Clocks open at the earlier moment; whether a flag counts as awareness is for counsel and the supervisor.
NIS 2 Article 23 timings
As the chapter gives them: an early warning of a significant incident within 24 hours of becoming aware, an incident notification within 72 hours and a final report within one month.
Closed clock with reasons
A clock that does not apply is closed with the classification, the time and the name of the person. The closed clocks are part of the evidence.
Evidence view and management view
Incident roles and auditors see the action-level record of who did what. Management reports show aggregates only, by team and period, with no figure by name, and the purpose is written into the agreement and the tool.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: Instrument, article and what must be shown
  • Sort: A rule of the case system, or an AI draft?

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The architecture should not try to settle whether an AI system's flag counts as awareness. What does it mean in practice to make the question answerable instead?
  2. A management body cannot be accountable for what it cannot see. What would a quarterly report need to contain for your board to oversee the SOC's delegation?
  3. The same log serves accountability under the regulations and must never become a score under the works agreement. Which design choice does most to keep the two apart?

Exercise · 40 minutes

Building the incident clock

Follow the seven steps of the practical guide. For each legal entity of your organisation, or for Hansa Mutual's EU entities and Nordvik Region, list the regimes that apply and the authority or CSIRT that receives the report. Define which events write the first-flag timestamp and which write the human-confirmed timestamp. Write the rule by which the case system opens every clock that could apply at the earlier moment. Name an owner and a deputy for each clock and say how they are reached out of hours. Specify the notification templates that AI drafts at Level 1 Assisted and a person checks, the rule for closing a clock with reasons, and a quarterly rehearsal using a closed case.

Deliverable: A clock profile listing regimes per entity, the two awareness timestamps, start rules, limits as the instrument gives them, owners, deputies and closing rules.

Self-test

  1. At which moment do the clocks open in the chapter's design?

    1. When the management body is informed at its next meeting
    2. At the earlier of the first flag and the human confirmation, by a rule of the case system
    3. When the investigation agent classifies the incident as major
    4. When legal counsel has decided what awareness means for the regime concerned
  2. How does the book read the AI Act's Annex III in relation to AI used for security operations?

    1. Every triage and investigation agent is a prohibited practice
    2. All security AI is high-risk, because it is a safety component of critical infrastructure
    3. Security AI is outside the Act's definition of an AI system
    4. No listed use describes security operations, though the SOC's AI is an AI system under the Act
  3. What is the AI ceiling for sending a notification to an authority, in the chapter's table across the degrees of delegation?

    1. Not delegated: a named person sends it, because the duty cannot be held by a system
    2. Level 3 Bounded, inside a playbook with a rate limit
    3. Level 2 Supervised, with approval by the duty analyst
    4. Level 1 Assisted, with the AI sending the notice once a named person has read the draft

Chapter 20 · 90 minutes

Measuring the Transformed Blue Team: Speed, Coverage and Quality of Judgement

The lesson shows how to measure a blue team that works with AI without rewarding the wrong behaviour, across all five functions. Participants see how mean time to detect, mean time to respond, closure rate and alert volume are gamed, replace them with four families of measure, speed, coverage, quality of judgement and learning, each with a gaming check, build a one-page board report with at most three decisions, and set the limits on measures about people.

Learning objectives

  • Explain how each of the four traditional SOC measures is gamed and what it hides
  • Select measures from the four families and attach a gaming check to each
  • Draft a one-page board report with counts beside every figure and at most three decisions
  • State the four limits on measures about people and apply the minimum group size rule

Key concepts

Verified incidents as the denominator
Speed is measured on verified incidents, not alerts. An alert closed as benign does not enter the denominator, and an incident found by a hunt, a purple exercise or a third party does.
Gaming check
The check paired with a measure that shows when it is being bought: reversal share for time to contain, the date of the last passing test for coverage, the seed protocol for judgement, a passing re-test for learning.
Cost per verified case
The cost of the SOC's analyst time, platform and agent budget divided by the number of cases verified as incidents. It prices judgement and replaces cost per alert.
Board page
One page with at most three decisions, each traced to a measure. Every figure is shown with its count, because 0.86 from 28 seeds and 0.86 from 280 seeds are different statements.
Minimum group size
A figure for a group so small that it identifies a person is an individual figure. Nordvik Region's six analysts are therefore reported as a whole unit, never by shift, week or reviewer.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Four families of measure
  • Scenario: The provider's figures and the board page

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A measure is safe as a target only if the behaviour that improves it is the behaviour the organisation wants. Which of your current targets fails that test?
  2. The practical guide says to set thresholds, not targets, and to express them as stop rules. What changes in behaviour when a number triggers a stop instead of a reward?
  3. Hansa Mutual's problem is too much data and Nordvik Region's is that it cannot yet see its provider. Which is the harder position from which to report honestly to a board?

Exercise · 35 minutes

Replacing a closure-rate target

Follow the seven steps of the practical guide for your own SOC or for Nordvik Region. Withdraw the target on closure rate or alerts handled and say where the figure stays for capacity planning. Write the scope to agree with employee representatives: which measures, at which level and for how long. Choose one measure from speed, one from quality of judgement and one from learning, and attach a gaming check to each. Describe the one-quarter shadow run in which old and new figures are reported side by side, and what divergence you would look for. Express any trigger as a stop rule. Then sketch the board page with counts beside every figure and no more than three decisions.

Deliverable: A measurement proposal with three measures, three gaming checks, agreed reporting scope, a shadow-run plan and a one-page board report sketch.

Self-test

  1. What happens to mean time to respond and closure rate on the day an AI system starts closing defined classes of alert?

    1. They become impossible to compute from the case record
    2. They worsen until the analysts have learned the new tool
    3. They improve, whether or not the system closes correctly
    4. They stay the same, because closures by AI are not counted
  2. What is the gaming check for the coverage family?

    1. The number of rules deployed in the SIEM
    2. The date of the last passing test, carried in every cell of the map
    3. The share of alerts closed within the shift
    4. The supplier's statement of ATT&CK coverage for its default detections
  3. Which rule does the chapter set for measures about people?

    1. Individual figures are shared only with the analyst's line manager
    2. The existence of seeding is kept secret from analysts so that nobody can prepare
    3. A ticket field collected for another purpose may be reused for appraisal once it is available
    4. No measure is computed per named analyst, and agreement with representatives precedes collection

Module 5 · Part V · People and Career

Part V turns to the people. It describes the analyst's load, the night and what it means to be managed by metrics; defines the competences of the transformed blue team and shows them by exercise, not certificate; treats the apprenticeship problem that follows when AI does the junior triage; and looks ahead to 2036 with a horizon register. Participants leave with a quarterly load review, a competence record, a craft programme and a horizon register for their own team.

Chapter 21 · 90 minutes

The Analyst at Work: Fatigue, On-Call and Being Managed by Metrics

The lesson describes the analyst at work and concerns B3 Investigate, B4 Respond and B5 Learn. Participants examine what the studies of SOC work measured and what they did not, how reviewing agent output changes the load, how analysts are managed by metrics and monitored by their own tools, what co-determination means for SOC tooling, and stage the debate on whether AI relieves or intensifies the load before designing a quarterly fatigue and on-call review.

Learning objectives

  • Describe what the cited studies of SOC analysts measured, in whom and by what method, and name the gaps in the evidence
  • Explain how queue pace, individual scores and activity logging manage the analyst
  • Evaluate the case for concern and the case for calm on AI and the analyst's load
  • Design a quarterly fatigue and on-call review with aggregate figures and five questions

Key concepts

Review as the new queue
A queue of machine conclusions that are nearly always right resembles the alarm queue the studies describe: many items, mostly benign, each needing a check that feels unnecessary.
Queue pace as a direction decision
The cap on open proposals, the routing thresholds and the share of work that goes to a person are set in a policy. That policy is a design decision about the analyst's pace, not a tuning parameter.
A SOC tool is a tool about the SOC
An agreement with employee representatives covers the platform analysts use, not only software bought to monitor people, because SOC tooling logs queries, approvals and time to approval.
Right to stop for reviewers
Any reviewer may pause agent proposals for their shift when the cap is reached or the queue outruns attention, and the pause is not counted against them.
Protected time
A fixed block each week, half a day by default, for engineering, hunting or practice. The SOC lead cancels it only by recording the reason in the quarterly review.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Who can do what about the load?
  • Scenario: Shifts above the cap

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The book's two organisations are worked examples that show a mechanism and never how common it is. How should a teacher or a manager use such examples without turning them into evidence?
  2. Karin Lund at Nordvik Region carried seven duties until her time budget was written down. Where in your team does one person silently hold several of the roles this book describes?
  3. Both sides of the debate agree that review volume must be capped so the system gives way before the person does. What would the cap cost your organisation, and who would have to accept that cost?

Exercise · 30 minutes

A quarterly fatigue and on-call review

Prepare the review of the practical guide for your team or for Hansa Mutual's group SOC. List the aggregates to collect two weeks before, by team, class and shift and never by person: proposals per reviewer-shift against the cap, the share of shifts where the cap was reached and median time in review by tier. Draft a short voluntary questionnaire to agree with representatives, reported only for groups of five or more. Write the five questions of the guide in your own terms, and for each a typical response with an owner and a date, such as lowering the cap or rebalancing the rota. State how the review is recorded and who receives the aggregate report.

Deliverable: A review template with the list of aggregates, the questionnaire, five questions, candidate actions with owners and the reporting rule.

Self-test

  1. What does the chapter say about evidence on the effect of AI on SOC analysts' fatigue?

    1. A large survey from 2025 shows that AI halves analyst burnout
    2. Two controlled studies show that AI review increases fatigue
    3. The works councils have published measurements of fatigue from Hansa Mutual's group SOC
    4. No study the book relies on measures whether reviewing AI conclusions raises or lowers fatigue
  2. Why can Nordvik Region not apply the group size of five to subteams when reporting figures?

    1. Because its union has refused all measurement of the team
    2. Because with six analysts any subteam would be small enough to identify a person
    3. Because the provider owns all the data about the analysts
    4. Because national law forbids aggregate reporting about staff in public authorities
  3. Which label does the verdict give to the claim that AI will end alert fatigue?

    1. Speculation, like the opposite claim that it makes the work unbearable
    2. Observable, on the evidence of the qualitative studies of alarm validation
    3. Expected, on the trend of closure by class
    4. A design assumption that the team tests by drill

Chapter 22 · 105 minutes

Competences, Training and Exercises: A Framework for the Transformed Blue Team

The lesson defines the competences of the transformed blue team across all five functions and shows how they are built, assessed and evidenced. Participants work with the framework SOC-CF of eight domains and 24 identifiers, the four levels shown with and without the assistant, competence records as personal data, six kinds of exercise, the AI literacy duty of Article 4 of the AI Act, and conditions that tie an autonomy ceiling to evidenced holders.

Learning objectives

  • Describe the eight domains of the competence framework and the profile each growing role needs
  • Explain why the lower of the unassisted and assisted results counts and why certificates support Foundation only
  • Design a half-day two-pass exercise and write the competence records that follow from it
  • Formulate a competence condition that lowers an autonomy ceiling when evidenced holders are missing

Key concepts

SOC-CF
Hansa Mutual's group competence framework, version 2027.1, with eight domains of three identifiers each: DET, INV, HNT, CMD, AGT, DAT, LAW and COM. Nordvik Region uses the same domains with twelve identifiers.
Four levels
Foundation, Practitioner, Advanced and Expert. Where a competence has an unassisted and an assisted form, the lower of the two is the level, and everything above Foundation rests on an exercise or tested work.
Competence record
A record of judgement exercised, identified as CMP-*: the levels shown, the evidence, the validity period and the development plan. It holds exercise evidence only, excludes ranking, pay and discipline, and is read in full by the person.
AGT domain
The competences for working with agents: reading mandates, delegation profiles and playbooks (AGT-01), reviewing agent proposals (AGT-02), and writing and testing the playbook that bounds an agent (AGT-03).
Competence condition on autonomy
A rule that makes an agent's ceiling depend on evidenced holders. Under AIDR-0780, a Level 3 Bounded class needs at least two holders per site; if unmet, the ceiling falls to Level 2 Supervised.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: Which exercise shows which competence?
  • Sort: Which level does this evidence show?

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A competence that can only be shown with the assistant counts at the lower level. What would your team's map look like if every competence were assessed in both forms?
  2. A finding about a tool goes to the finding register; a finding about a person goes only to that person's plan. Why does the chapter insist on keeping the two apart?
  3. A holder whose record expires is treated like a lapsed certificate on a service, and the agent's ceiling drops. Is that proportionate, and what would you do to avoid being surprised by it?

Exercise · 45 minutes

A half-day exercise and the records it produces

Design the assessment of the practical guide for your team or for Nordvik Region's six analysts. Write the terms to agree with employee representatives first: purposes, readers and excluded uses. Choose six to ten identifiers and the level at which each is to be shown. Outline one scenario built from a past post-incident review with no real identity or host, and for the assisted pass describe three seeded errors in an AI-drafted summary and one false lead, by kind only. Plan the two 60-minute passes and two assessors, one from outside the person's line. Then write one competence record from the teacher's result sheet, taking the lower of the two passes, with a learning plan for each gap.

Deliverable: An exercise plan with agreed record terms, identifiers, scenario outline and rubric, plus one completed competence record with a dated learning plan.

Self-test

  1. In the competence record CMP-NR-04, why does INV-02 stand at Foundation?

    1. Because the analyst held no certificate in evidence handling
    2. Because the two assessors disagreed by a level and recorded the average of their grades
    3. Because the lower of the two passes counts, and evidence handling slipped without the assistant
    4. Because Nordvik Region's framework has no level above Foundation
  2. What does a certificate support in the chapter's framework?

    1. Foundation only; everything above rests on an exercise or on tested work
    2. Practitioner, if the certificate is less than two years old
    3. Advanced, when it is combined with an attestation from the person's line manager
    4. Any level, provided the provider of the course is accredited
  3. What happens under Hansa Mutual's competence conditions when fewer than two evidenced holders of the required competence exist at a site?

    1. The agent is retired and its manifest is closed
    2. The management body is asked to accept the residual risk in its minutes
    3. The remaining holder is given a higher level to compensate
    4. The Level 3 Bounded ceiling falls back to Level 2 Supervised

Chapter 23 · 105 minutes

Keeping the Craft and Making New Analysts: The Apprenticeship Problem

The lesson treats the apprenticeship problem and concerns B3 Investigate, B2 Detect and B5 Learn, with the degraded-mode drills reaching B4 Respond. If AI closes the repetitive alerts, the route by which analysts learned goes first and experts practise less. Participants do the pipeline sum, design a measured and randomised share of unassisted work, a craft register with a supervision rule, an apprenticeship route with attempt-first use of the assistant, and a twelve-month craft programme.

Learning objectives

  • Explain the two halves of the apprenticeship problem and the labels the chapter gives to the evidence
  • Calculate the entrants a team needs each year from posts, an assumed attrition and converted posts
  • Design a craft register and a randomised, graded share of unassisted work by activity
  • Draft an apprenticeship record with stages, permissions, forbidden uses and the attempt-first rule

Key concepts

Rebuilt, not restored
The book's conclusion on the ladder: tier 1 was one way of producing the capabilities investigation requires, and the route is designed anew instead of restoring a tedious queue unchanged.
Craft register
A team-level table in version control: for each task the agents perform or support, how many analysts have demonstrated it without assistance, the delegation now and the minimum able to work it unaided in the rota pool.
Supervision rule
The rule both organisations accept: no class stays at Level 3 Bounded when the people who could work it by hand have gone. The register's minimum governs the delegation.
Attempt first, then ask
The rule for an apprentice and the assistant: during the first six months the apprentice works every core case and alert without the assistant's summary, and asks after making an own attempt.
Graduated responsibility
The apprentice earns authority in stages, each naming what the apprentice may and may not do, starting in a shadow queue where nothing is closed on the apprentice's word.

Interactive exercises

  • Scenario: One person left who can work the class by hand
  • Match: Mechanisms of an apprenticeship route

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. Analysts who choose which cases to work unassisted choose the easy ones. What would random selection with a hidden summary feel like in your team, and how would you introduce it?
  2. The case for calm holds that the old tier 1 was a poor school. What did it teach that a designed route might fail to teach?
  3. Nordvik Region keeps its unassisted share at one in ten because it has no slack, a price accepted knowingly. What makes a price knowingly accepted different from a risk ignored?

Exercise · 40 minutes

Setting up a craft programme

Carry out the first six steps of the practical guide for your team or for Nordvik Region with its trainee post. Build a craft register of at least four tasks the agents perform or support, with the number of people in the rota pool who can work each unaided and the minimum for the current delegation. Do the pipeline sum with your posts and an assumed attrition rate. Set the unassisted share by activity with randomised selection, and the grading of one in four cases within five working days. Name the mentor and protect four hours a week. Write an apprenticeship record with stages, what the apprentice may and may not do at each, the attempt-first rule and the forbidden uses.

Deliverable: A craft register, a pipeline sum, an unassisted-share policy with grading, and an apprenticeship record with stages and forbidden uses.

Self-test

  1. How does the chapter read the finding that Hansa Mutual's measured unassisted share was 0.10 where its policy sets 0.20?

    1. As proof that the policy share was set too high and should be halved
    2. As a finding: a share set in policy and not measured erodes first
    3. As a rounding effect of the small number of cases in the quarter
    4. As a breach by individual analysts to be raised in appraisal
  2. Which statement does the chapter label speculation?

    1. That people working beside reliable automation check less
    2. That unexercised skills decay in settings other than the SOC
    3. That the entry rung disappears altogether, so that organisations hire no juniors
    4. That closure by class and summarising by default are decided trends in the two organisations
  3. Who is the mentor of Nordvik Region's trainee analyst, and why?

    1. The second senior analyst, because Karin Lund's time budget contains no mentoring
    2. Karin Lund, because she owns the detections the trainee will learn from, starting with DET-NR-0001
    3. The provider's service manager, under annex MS-1
    4. The CISO, because the unit has no senior analysts

Chapter 24 · 90 minutes

The Future of the Blue Team: Will There Be a SOC in 2036?

The lesson looks ahead to 2036 across all five blue team functions with the discipline of a horizon register. Participants label trends observable, expected or speculation, attach triggers and postures, compare three scenarios, identify the four things that stay human, stage the debate on whether the SOC survives, and examine the author's own projection together with the five thresholds that would change it.

Learning objectives

  • Label trends as observable, expected or speculation and assign the posture of commitment, preparation or reversibility
  • Compare the three scenarios for 2036 by who performs each of the five functions
  • Explain the four things that stay human across the scenarios and the reasons given
  • Draft a horizon register with a measurable trigger, an owner and a review date for each trend

Key concepts

Horizon register
A register in version control in which every trend carries a label, a measurable trigger, an owner who is a role, and a posture, with a review at twelve months and earlier on any trigger.
Three postures
Observable trends call for commitment: the team builds for them today. Expected trends call for preparation without dependence. Speculation calls for reversibility: avoid any decision that is expensive to undo.
Three scenarios
A, managed and automated; B, dissolved into engineering and platform teams; C, the human-commanded loop. They are devices for thinking, not forecasts, and none carries a probability.
What stays human
Accountability for containment that cannot be undone, judgement under uncertainty, verification of what AI concludes, and the stop and the exit. These are the book's conclusions and design recommendations.
Author's projection
The author's own judgement about 2036, confined to this chapter and Chapter 28, labelled as such, described as the part of the book most likely to be wrong, and written to be falsified.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Observable, expected or speculation?
  • Scenario: Choosing a trigger for the register

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. A register that is never wrong is not being tested. Which trend in your own planning would you be most embarrassed to have written down, and why is that the one to include?
  2. The verdict separates whether an accountable function exists from whether it is called a SOC. Which of the two matters to your board, and which to your analysts?
  3. The author expects verification capacity, not alert volume, to become the binding constraint, and labels this speculation. What would you need to observe to move it to expected?

Exercise · 35 minutes

A horizon register for your team

Follow the seven steps of the practical guide. List at most eight trends, including at least one from each of the three labels and at least one that would be bad news for the team's current plan. Write each as one sentence in the form 'X is happening' or 'X will happen' and name the blue team functions it concerns. Label it: for observable, name the document or measurement; for expected, the source and horizon or the decided instrument; for speculation, what would turn it into an expectation. Attach one trigger measurable from your own records or a named external source, state the posture, name an owner by role and set the review date.

Deliverable: A horizon register of at most eight trends, each with statement, functions, label, evidence, trigger, posture, owner and review date.

Self-test

  1. Which posture does the horizon register prescribe for a trend labelled speculation?

    1. Commitment: the team builds for it today
    2. Preparation: the team builds the option and the skills
    3. Deferral: the team ignores the trend until the next yearly review of the register
    4. Reversibility: the team avoids decisions that are expensive to undo
  2. How does the chapter label a SOC with no human accountable for containment?

    1. Observable, because managed services already work this way
    2. Speculation, and the series' rule on irreversible actions argues against it
    3. Expected, on the trend of AI adoption that respondents to the ISC2 survey of 2025 report
    4. Required by law for essential entities from 2027
  3. Which of these is one of the five thresholds that would change the author's projection?

    1. A vendor announcing a model with higher benchmark scores
    2. A fall in the number of alerts raised per day in the reader's own SOC for two quarters
    3. At least two organisations showing analysts reaching investigation-lead competence without a tier 1 post
    4. A rise in the number of certificates held by the team

Module 6 · Part VI · Experience and Conclusions

Part VI tests the book against experience. It reads three public cases from the blue team's side and names seven anti-patterns with their controls, follows four fictional people through the year 2027 as dated decisions and records, draws a two-year plan with six measures and three open decisions for each organisation, and judges the five-part thesis against the evidence. Participants leave with an anti-pattern review, a year-in-review from records, a plan and a ninety-day programme.

Chapter 25 · 105 minutes

Case Studies and Anti-Patterns

The lesson reads three public cases from the standpoint of those who had to detect, contain and stop, across all five blue team functions: the July 2026 incident involving OpenAI's evaluation agents and Hugging Face systems, the Arup deepfake fraud and the AI-orchestrated espionage campaign disrupted by Anthropic. Participants then study seven anti-patterns of the transformed blue team, each with its mechanism, control and record, and run a two-hour anti-pattern review.

Learning objectives

  • Distinguish what a source reports from the author's interpretation in the three public cases
  • Explain the mechanism and the control for each of the seven anti-patterns
  • Locate each anti-pattern at the usage mode or degree of delegation where it concentrates
  • Review a team against the seven anti-patterns from its own records and assign controls and owners

Key concepts

Anti-pattern
A failure that recurs because its first step looks reasonable. Each is described by a name, a case, the mechanism and the control, and each gets a record so the pattern can be found in a team's own repository.
Closing by metric
The dashboard improves because a triage agent closes a growing share of alerts, since closure speed can be bought by closing. The control is a closure policy per class with an owner, sampling, seeded incidents and a numeric stop condition.
The provider's black box
A managed provider's AI acts at an effective autonomy nobody decided, under a contract silent on autonomy, sampling and notice of model change. The control is a weekly sample and the six terms of annex MS-2.
The rubber-stamp review
Human approval of agent proposals is given in seconds, so the approval no longer verifies anything. The control is tiered review with reproduction, a critique agent, caps on open proposals and seeded errors.
The unmonitored monitor
The SOC platform concentrates telemetry, detections, playbooks and agents; if its heartbeats stop or its case store accepts untrusted text as trusted, the team is blind or misled without an alarm. The control is tier-0 treatment.

Interactive exercises

  • Match: Anti-pattern and the control that changes the outcome
  • Scenario: A reopen rate of zero

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. In the July 2026 incident alerts fired and responders investigated, yet on-call staff advised that stopping the run was not required. What would have had to be written down beforehand for that advice to be different?
  2. The Arup fraud left no event in the SOC's telemetry. What is the blue team's legitimate part in a case it cannot detect, and where does that part end?
  3. The chapter says the cases support the thesis more than they prove it, because they are few and the illustrative ones are the author's. How should that limit the conclusions you draw from them?

Exercise · 40 minutes

A two-hour anti-pattern review, compressed

Run the review of the practical guide against your own team's records, or against Hansa Mutual's as the book gives them. Set the rules: evidence comes from records and nobody is named in a finding. Check each of the seven patterns with the guide's test: reopen rate and class owners for closing by metric; ten fired detections for owner, test and review date; stop holder and last timed drill for each agent with write access; class list, level and notice terms for each service with embedded AI; the oversight-quality metric and seeded errors for the rubber stamp; unassisted cases per junior; and whether a silent log source would page anyone. Record a finding, a control, an owner and a re-test date for each exposure.

Deliverable: An anti-pattern register with seven entries, each with exposure, evidence, control, owner and re-test date, and a draft decision record.

Self-test

  1. Why is the Arup deepfake fraud useful to a blue team, according to the chapter?

    1. Because it shows how an endpoint detection caught the fraud before any payment was made
    2. Because it shows that deepfake video calls are detected reliably by the email gateway
    3. Because nothing happened that a blue team's telemetry could see: no internal system was compromised
    4. Because it was stopped by an agent acting at Level 3 Bounded
  2. In the rubber-stamp case from INC-HM-2027-0455, why was the second isolation approved in 38 seconds?

    1. Because the approval screen did not show the asset tags
    2. Because the incident commander was asleep and a deputy acted
    3. Because the playbook allowed shared assets at Level 3 Bounded
    4. Because the critique agent had already approved the proposal
  3. At which usage mode does the anti-pattern 'the provider's black box' concentrate?

    1. Mode 3 Agentic work tools, because the analyst's identity is borrowed
    2. Mode 5 Autonomous production agents, because the stop path sits inside the agent
    3. Mode 1 Conversational assistants, because prompts are not logged
    4. Mode 0 Ambient AI, because the level is undeclared until the contract says

Chapter 26 · 90 minutes

A Year on the Blue Team: Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual

The lesson follows four fictional people through 2027 across all five blue team functions: Karin Lund at Nordvik Region, and Piotr Nowak, Lena Vogel and Thomas Brandt at Hansa Mutual. The year is told as dated decisions, records and measures: charters and an interim letter, a first adopted rule, an escaped closure, a stopped and reversed containment, drills that first failed, an oversight report and a works agreement annex. Participants write a year-in-review from records.

Learning objectives

  • Trace how each failure of the illustrative year was found and which record carried the response
  • Explain why the records written before they were needed mattered most
  • Compare the two organisations' kinds of leverage and their best investments
  • Draft a year-in-review that contains only what a record shows, with denominators and control classifications

Key concepts

Illustrative fiction
Everything in the chapter that happens in 2027, every person, date, figure and record, is invented to show the book's design at work. None of it is a report of events or a forecast.
Interim letter
The letter signed on 2027-01-27 under KBV-IT-2024: sampling results, the AI-use log and oversight measures are reported in aggregate only, and reviews carry no measure by person. It held until the SOC annex was signed on 2027-10-28.
A stop only those not on call could use
Nordvik Region's first out-of-hours drill found that no manager on the rota held the console role; a deputy with rights was reached after 14 minutes. AIDR-0731 set a 10-minute budget and assigned the role to every rota member.
Found by the design
The book's reading of the year: failures were found by a sample, a drill, a red-team exercise and an oversight report, and each arrived with an owner, a due date and a re-test.
Year-in-review from records
An account in which every sentence has a record behind it, every figure carries its denominator, no measure is reported by person, and a reviewer who was not part of the work checks every number.

Interactive exercises

  • Put in order: The year 2027 in records
  • Match: Four people and their part in the year

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The review of 2027-05-06 could be blameless because the record of what was meant to happen existed. Which records would your team need before its next incident for the same to be true?
  2. Piotr Nowak's team said the agents had not made the night quieter, only different, with less to read and more to approve. How would you find out whether the same is true in your team?
  3. Nordvik Region's best investments were small and Hansa Mutual's were structural. Which small investment would change most in your organisation this year?

Exercise · 35 minutes

A year-in-review from records, not memory

Follow the six steps of the practical guide for your own team, or for Nordvik Region using the events of the chapter. List the year's decisions with date, decider and status. List the incidents and reviews and note whether each finding has a passed re-test and on what date. List the measures from the agreed dashboards, using counts when the denominator is small. Classify each control as verified, declared or failed. Compare each decision's stated purpose with what the records show and say in the first line where they differ. End with the three decisions the records say are due next, with their owners. Name the reviewer who checks every number.

Deliverable: A year-in-review of at most two pages with decisions, incidents, measures with denominators, classified controls and three decisions due next.

Self-test

  1. What did Nordvik Region's first out-of-hours stop drill on 2027-05-13 find?

    1. That the provider failed to page within the five minutes annex MS-1 requires
    2. That no manager on the rota held the console role needed for the stop
    3. That the isolation playbook had isolated a citizen-facing service
    4. That the stop took 57 seconds against a target of 120 seconds
  2. How was the escaped phishing closure CASE-NR-0231 found?

    1. By the Region's weekly sample of the provider's closed alerts
    2. By the provider's own quarterly escape report
    3. By a seeded incident injected under annex MS-2
    4. By the Region's triage assistant NR-SEC-001, which reopened the alert
  3. Which of these is one of the three conclusions the book draws from the year's records?

    1. The failures were found by luck, which shows the limits of the design
    2. Aggregate-only reporting cost the SOC most of its useful measures
    3. Agents removed the load from the night shift entirely
    4. The records that mattered most were written before they were needed

Chapter 27 · 90 minutes

Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual: Conclusions for Two Organisations

The lesson draws the book into a conclusion and a two-year plan for each organisation across all five blue team functions. Nordvik Region concludes that a small hybrid team transforms by owning detection content, the sample, the stop and the entry rung; Hansa Mutual that agents may act at night when every delegation is a record, every stop is drilled and review is measured. Participants study six measures and three open decisions per organisation and turn a conclusion into a plan.

Learning objectives

  • Summarise the conclusion each organisation gives to its governing body and the constraint that shapes its plan
  • Explain why Hansa Mutual's measure H1 is written as a gate with two keys
  • Compare the two organisations by source of leverage, where the limit sits and how quality is shown
  • Draft a plan of at most six measures ordered by reversibility with at most three decisions for the management body

Key concepts

Gate with two keys
Hansa Mutual's measure H1: a closure class moves to Level 3 Bounded only on the class's own evidence, no escape in its sample and seeded catch at or above 0.85 for two quarters, with review quality as a second condition.
Ordering by reversibility
Measures that are cheap and reversible run first; commitments that are hard to undo come last and are conditional. Nordvik Region starts with hunts and re-tests before larger commitments.
Three open decisions
At most three decisions go to the management body. It is never asked to decide what a record has already decided, and its accountability under NIS 2 Article 20 or DORA Article 5 cannot pass to a tool or a provider.
What to stop doing
A plan that adds without retiring turns into what it was meant to prevent. Examples are treating a provider's closure rate as evidence of coverage and counting drafts as progress.
Five general conclusions
Delegation set by class and reversibility and recorded; the stop outside the system it stops; judgement measured by what speed cannot buy; the craft kept by design; and measures about people agreed with representatives first.

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Who should stop doing this?
  • Scenario: A gate with two keys

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. Nordvik Region's plan adds no agent team and no Mode 5 agent. What is the value of writing down what a plan deliberately leaves out?
  2. Hansa Mutual has the platform, the engineering and the agents, and needs the discipline not to widen what it cannot yet show it can supervise. What usually breaks that discipline in a large organisation?
  3. Nordvik's first decision asks the committee to accept a re-tender or a change of provider if annex MS-2 is refused. What makes a management body willing to accept a consequence of that size?

Exercise · 35 minutes

Turning a conclusion into a plan

Follow the seven steps of the practical guide for your own team. List the year's decision records as done, in progress or reopened. For each of the five functions name the constraint that most limits it and write the conclusion your records support; a function with no supporting record gets no measure. Write at most six measures, each with a verb, an owner by role, a date and a verification that produces evidence, and order them by reversibility. Write any increase in delegation as a gate on the class's own evidence with a threshold, a period, a named grantor and a stop rule. List what the team stops doing, and at most three decisions for the management body.

Deliverable: A two-year plan with at most six measures, one delegation gate, a stop-doing list, review triggers and three decisions for the management body.

Self-test

  1. What is Nordvik Region's conclusion for its regional director, recorded in AIDR-0713?

    1. That the unit should become a 24/7 SOC with its own agent team
    2. That a large in-house SOC can let agents act at night if every stop is drilled and review is measured
    3. That a small hybrid team transforms by owning the few things that decide its quality and making the rest visible by contract
    4. That the provider's AI should be granted Level 4 Autonomous for low-severity alerts out of hours
  2. What must a closure class's own record show before Hansa Mutual extends Level 3 Bounded to it under measure H1?

    1. A closure rate above the group average for one month
    2. No escape in its own sample and a seeded catch of at least 0.85 for two quarters
    3. A recommendation from the supplier of the triage agent's model
    4. A median time to close below 30 seconds with a reopen rate of zero for a full quarter
  3. According to the comparison table, what is the source of leverage for each organisation?

    1. Nordvik Region: the contract and the rules it owns; Hansa Mutual: the platform and the agent team
    2. Nordvik Region: a large pyramid of analysts; Hansa Mutual: a single managed provider's AI
    3. Nordvik Region: its group AI governance board; Hansa Mutual: public procurement law
    4. Nordvik Region: seven legal regimes; Hansa Mutual: one jurisdiction and public law

Chapter 28 · 90 minutes

Conclusions: The Blue Team Transformed

The lesson judges the book's five-part thesis against the evidence across all five blue team functions. Participants examine the verdict on each part and what remains unproved, the status of the twelve questions, the author's labelled projection of what a person, a system and a person conducting systems should do in 2036, the evidence that would change the view, the six commitments of the series, the limits of the book and the final test.

Learning objectives

  • State the verdict on each of the five parts of the thesis and what remains unproved in each
  • Distinguish the four kinds of evidence the book uses and explain what 'held' means in its verdicts
  • Explain the author's projection for 2036 by function and which parts of it are speculative
  • Apply the final test to a team and draft a one-page plan for the first ninety days

Key concepts

Held, not proved
When the chapter says a part of the thesis held, it means it survived the tests the book could apply: the literature, the instruments, the design and the worked cases. None of it is a measured outcome from a real SOC over years.
The queue and the loop
The test changed the second part of the thesis: 'from the queue to the loop' is better stated as 'from the queue alone to the queue and the loop', because the queue remains and a loop with no cap becomes a queue.
A person conducting systems
The third term of the projection: the person who conducts an AI team under a written mandate, engineers, verifies and learns, while a person alone decides and answers for what cannot be undone, is disclosed or is decided about people.
Six commitments of the series
Keep decisions as records that can be corrected, keep the stop outside the system stopped, keep people able to do the work and judge the output, keep dependence reversible, match autonomy to reversibility, and keep a named person in the chair for every consequence.
The final test
Two questions answered by records and drills, not opinions: can the team show from its own records who or what decided what, and can it stop what it has started and recover?

Interactive exercises

  • Sort: Who does it in 2036?
  • Put in order: The first ninety days

Done on the lesson page, with feedback at once.

Discussion

  1. The fifth part of the thesis is described as argued but not proved, a requirement on design and not a result. What should an organisation do with a claim of that status?
  2. The book does not claim that people are better than machines at detecting intrusions, and sets a high bar on purpose for withdrawing the thesis. What exactly is the claim, then, and why is the bar set there?
  3. The sixth commitment applies twice in a blue team: to the incidents it handles and to the analysts themselves. Why is the second application the one a SOC is least likely to see?

Exercise · 35 minutes

The final test and a ninety-day plan

Take the final test for your team. For the first question, pick one closed case or one closure by AI and trace from your own records who or what decided each step; write the result as yes, partly or not yet shown, with a note. For the second, state when the stop was last timed and when the team last worked without the AI. Then draft the one-page plan of the practical guide: days 1 to 10 an inventory by mode and level, days 11 to 30 a one-page delegation profile and weekly sampling, days 31 to 60 a stop drill, a degraded-mode drill and seeded incidents with measures agreed with representatives, days 61 to 80 the final test again, days 81 to 90 a one-page report to the management body.

Deliverable: A final-test record with two answered questions and next steps, and a one-page ninety-day plan with owner, sponsor and definition of done.

Self-test

  1. Which part of the thesis does the chapter judge the weakest, argued but not proved?

    1. That the blue team is transformed, not abolished
    2. That autonomy is matched to reversibility, with a stop path outside the system it stops
    3. That the defenders' AI is part of the estate that is defended
    4. That the route by which analysts are made and their wellbeing are design questions
  2. Which of the twelve questions does the chapter leave open?

    1. Who may isolate, disable or disclose, and how fast
    2. Whether AI reduces or intensifies fatigue
    3. Which functions may be delegated, to what degree, and who decides
    4. Who is accountable for a missed intrusion that AI closed
  3. In the author's projection for 2036, what is a person alone expected to do in B4 Respond?

    1. Contain anything wide, irreversible or person-related, disclose and command
    2. Execute reversible containment inside a playbook that a policy decision point enforces
    3. Assemble evidence packs and run re-tests
    4. Read, extract and correlate intelligence reports