Playbooks are used by cybersecurity professionals to store or encapsulate knowledge on cybersecurity topics and tactics. You will use these again and again in the field to deal with situations as they arise. The idea is that you don’t want to wait until a challenging situation arises to have a plan; you want to already have potential mitigation strategies in your playbook that can help kickstart your process toward finding solutions.

Watch the following video to learn more about how you will be building a playbook in your program.

Remember, playbooks should not be confused with typical portfolios. You will not be presenting your playbook to an employer or bringing it to an interview. However, it will prepare you to successfully present yourself and your knowledge when approaching an interview or when meeting with a key stakeholder about an issue that arose.

The intent of the playbook in this academic program is not only to give you a base playbook to start your career, but also to help you develop the ability to transfer your knowledge and skills from this academic program into real-world contexts.

Professional playbooks are continuing to become more commonly shared within the industry. The following are examples of how other professional cybersecurity spaces have set up playbooks to help preserve and share their knowledge:

• Incident Response Consortium
• A Playbook Puts Cyber Defenders in the Game

You should keep adding to your playbook throughout each course in order to best prepare yourself to discuss the evolution of your playbook at that time.

This Cyber Playbook is based off the SNHU Cyber Security course work.