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Day 6 · Practice
75–90 min

Day 6: First hands-on lab

Reading stops here — today you practice. You will work through a beginner-friendly lab, document every command, and produce evidence the way practitioners do during assessments and SOC exercises.

Today's outcome: You complete a guided lab, capture commands and screenshots, and write a short findings summary.

Start: First cybersecurity lab…Full week plan

Week progress

Day 6 of 7

  1. 1

    Security mindset & threat basics

  2. 2

    Networking for security

  3. 3

    Linux command line

  4. 4

    Web security introduction

  5. 5

    SOC & log awareness

  6. 6

    First hands-on lab

    You are here

  7. 7

    Pick your career direction

Goals

Learning objectives

By the end of today you should be able to:

  • Start and complete a guided security lab on the platform
  • Record commands, observations, and timestamps in your notebook
  • Capture screenshots or log snippets as evidence
  • Write a 5-sentence summary: what happened, what you found, what you would recommend

Schedule

Suggested schedule

Adjust timing to your pace — aim for one focused block per day.

  1. Setup~10 min

    Read lab objectives and scenario; open your notes template.

  2. Lab~50 min

    Complete the suspicious SSH login investigation lab step by step.

  3. Evidence~15 min

    Export screenshots and annotate key log lines.

  4. Report~15 min

    Draft a mini incident note: timeline, impact, next steps.

Learn

Mapped learning resources

These links connect this day to tutorials, labs, roadmaps, and reference material on PentesterWorld.

Primary

First cybersecurity lab

Investigate suspicious SSH login attempts — beginner-friendly blue-team exercise.

Open resource

HTTP security headers lab

Alternative starter lab if you prefer web security hands-on practice.

Open resource

SOC analyst foundation

Review triage concepts before or after the lab.

Open resource

Incident notes template

Structure your lab write-up like a real SOC ticket.

Open resource

Concepts

Key terms for today

HypothesisEvidenceTimelineScopeFindingRecommendationReproducibility

Notebook

Reflection prompts

Copy these into your learning notebook — answers become portfolio material later.

  • What was the initial alert or trigger in the lab scenario?
  • Which command or log line proved the suspicious activity?
  • What would I escalate to a senior analyst?

Up next: Day 7

Pick your career direction

Day 5Day 7