In this unique course you get to hone your psychological skills and take ‘thinking like an attacker’ to a whole new level.”

Course outline

Red Teams and Pen Testers take an adversarial stance to challenge organisations for one reason only – to get those organisations to change their practices, and raise their game to be ready for the threats that they will face from real attackers. This is harsh real-world learning for those organisations, albeit not as harsh as having to learn from real attacks from real threat actors.

At a technical level, the activities of Red Teams and Pen Testers lead to the exposure of vulnerabilities. Identifying and importantly, understanding these complex vulnerabilities then allows those responsible for the assets and processes to patch and upgrade their defences.

At the human level the process of clarifying and explaining an organisation’s vulnerabilities is that much harder. This is because attackers will use techniques and tactics that depend on concepts most people are unaware off. This is why their attacks work so well!

Artifice train professional Red Teams and Pen Testers to demonstrate, articulate and then mitigate the human dimension of an organisation’s vulnerabilities. Our system of deceptive thinking allows attackers to conceive courses of action that will successfully penetrate the defences of their clients. But most importantly, the Red Teams and Pen Testers will need to explain their clever attacks in terms that can be meaningfully understood by their clients. Then those clients must be able to plan mitigation strategies with that new insight. This is the fundamental purpose of taking an adversarial stance within the learning relationship. The Artifice System provides the professional lexicon to underpin these phases of vital organisational development. It lifts the dialogue and empowers the stakeholders accept and respond to vulnerabilities the Red Team attack process exposes.

Who the course is aimed at

The course has been designed for Red Team members, Pen Testers and their respective key clients. Our programmes are accessible to a diverse range of delegates that need to get organisations to understand how they can be attacked and what they need to do to meet those attacks.

You will find the course really useful if you already have well developed technical and analytical skills but lack the human factors background that would enhance your professional practice.

If you need to think like a successful attacker and present your ideas with Board Level credibility, you need the Artifice System to showcase your ideas and help you empower your clients.

Course outcomes

The course provides comprehensive human factors support to those planning Red Team and Penetration Testing activities. Our materials and approach are applicable to all contexts irrespective of your specialist role. Over the 4 days you will be given the conceptual models and practical tool sets to amplify and extend your professional skills. We help you to think deceptively, in order that you can:

• improve the probability of success when you plan and conduct Red Team and Pen Test activities that rely on human vulnerabilities
• create and present intellectually robust and accessible explanations of how and why your attacks succeeded 
• identify the opportunity and any inherent professional risks in deception-related activities 
• distinguish the environmental factors that indicate when deception and influence activities could be utilised to achieve your objectives
• categorise target audiences and specify intelligence requirements for your activities
• evaluate the practical, legal, moral and ethical considerations that relate to your use of deception and influence activities in a Red Team or Pen Test professional context
• employ concepts from the behavioural, cognitive and wider social sciences in the conceptualisation of your deception and influence activities
• formulate measures for monitoring and evaluating your deception and influence activity

Get in touch