---
url: "https://xcademia.com/courses/cyber-defence-operations-and-resilience-command"
title: Cyber Defence Operations and Resilience Command
description: "Five-day advanced training for CISOs and security directors. Covers cyber defence command, wargame facilitation, resilience programme design, and board-level st"
publishedAt: "2026-04-13T11:57:30.902158+00:00"
updatedAt: "2026-04-29T05:04:20.574329+00:00"
type: course
code: "CYB-0170"
level: Professional
duration_days: "5"
track: "Cyber Warfare & Advanced Threat Defence"
category: "Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking"
credential_tier: tier1
price_gbp: "4195"
---

# Cyber Defence Operations and Resilience Command

> A five-day advanced programme for senior security leaders covering the design and command of cyber defence operations against nation-state threats, cyber wargame facilitation, and enterprise-scale resilience programme leadership. Build the capability to run a cyber defence operation under pressure, design and facilitate executive wargames, coordinate with government and law enforcement during a crisis, and deliver a board-level cyber warfare resilience strategy.

## Overview

Senior security leaders are expected to do more than defend a perimeter. They are expected to lead under sustained nation-state attack, coordinate across government, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies, communicate credibly with non-technical boards during a crisis, and design resilience programmes that make their organisations genuinely harder to damage over time. This five-day advanced programme develops those capabilities across the full scope of cyber defence leadership.

Across five mentor-led days, participants design and command cyber defence operations against nation-state adversaries, build and run cyber wargame exercises for senior leadership, design enterprise-scale cyber resilience programmes with measurable outcomes, coordinate with NCSC, law enforcement, and sector regulators during a simulated crisis, manage public communications during an active attack, and plan recovery and reconstitution operations at scale.

The programme is structured around two major capstone exercises: a participant-designed and participant-delivered full tabletop wargame exercise on Days 3 and 4, and a complete board-level cyber warfare resilience strategy presentation on Day 5. This course is aligned with NCSC cyber resilience guidance, UK Critical National Infrastructure protection policy, NIS2 essential entity obligations, and international cyber crisis coordination frameworks.

## Prerequisites

- Senior security leadership experience as a CISO, Security Director, SOC Manager, or equivalent role.
- Solid operational understanding of incident response, threat intelligence, and SOC operations.
- Familiarity with the cyber threat landscape and nation-state targeting of your sector.

## What you will learn

- Design and command a cyber defence operation against a persistent nation-state threat at enterprise scale.
- Run a cyber wargame exercise for senior leadership that produces measurable decision-making improvements.
- Build a national-scale or enterprise-scale cyber resilience programme with measurable outcomes.
- Coordinate effectively with NCSC, law enforcement, and sector regulators during a live cyber crisis.
- Manage crisis communications during an active nation-state attack without compromising operational security.
- Produce a board-level cyber warfare resilience strategy that satisfies regulatory and governance requirements.
- Design a post-incident review and lessons learned programme that drives continuous resilience improvement.

## Skills you will gain

- Cyber defence operation command
- Wargame design and facilitation
- Resilience programme design and measurement
- Inter-agency crisis coordination
- Crisis communications management
- Board-level resilience strategy design
- Recovery and reconstitution planning
- Lessons learned integration methodology
- CNI coordination framework knowledge
- Red team programme integration
- Regulatory alignment for resilience
- Post-incident review methodology

## Career progression

- CISO
- Security Director
- SOC Manager
- Government Security Lead
- Crisis Management Director
- Head of Cyber Resilience

## Curriculum

1. **Module 1: Getting Ready**
   - Pre-reading: NCSC cyber resilience guidance, UK National Cyber Strategy, and NIS2 essential entity obligations
   - Introduction to the cyber defence operation command framework used throughout the programme
   - Accessing course materials, wargame design templates, and crisis simulation scenario resources
   - Course objectives, leadership baseline assessment, and individual development focus areas
2. **Module 2: Strategic Cyber Defence Doctrine**
   - Blue team operations at strategic scale: organising defence for persistent nation-state threat
   - Critical infrastructure will be the top cyber battleground: AI-assisted adversaries coordinating multi-country operations
   - Defence-in-depth architecture for nation-state adversaries: what works and what does not at scale
   - Designing a defensive architecture that assumes breach and focuses on resilience and rapid recovery
   - Threat-informed defence: using intelligence to prioritise defensive investment and capability development
3. **Module 3: SOC Command During Nation-State Incidents**
   - Triage and escalation decision-making under sustained attack: what to prioritise when everything is on fire
   - Communicating with non-technical leadership during an active crisis: what they need and when they need it
   - Managing analyst teams under sustained pressure: cognitive load, rotation, and decision quality over time
   - Coordinating detection, response, and containment across multiple concurrent attack vectors simultaneously
   - Real-time decision documentation: maintaining an auditable incident command log under operational pressure
4. **Module 4: Inter-Agency Coordination During a Crisis**
   - NCSC engagement during a significant cyber incident: what to share, when, and in what format
   - Law enforcement coordination: NCA, police, and when criminal investigation and incident response overlap
   - Sector regulator coordination: FCA, Ofgem, CQC, and NIS Competent Authorities during a cyber event
   - Intelligence sharing during a live incident: receiving and acting on government threat intelligence in real time
   - International coordination for multi-country or cross-sector nation-state attacks affecting allied nations
5. **Module 5: Crisis Communications During an Active Attack**
   - Managing public communications credibly while an attack is still active and outcome is uncertain
   - Staff communications: maintaining team cohesion and accurate information flow during extended incidents
   - Customer and partner communications: what to disclose, when, and at what level of technical detail
   - •	Coordinating with board and executive sponsor on communications strategy during a live operational crisis
6. **Module 6: Wargame Design Methodology**
   - What makes a cyber wargame genuinely valuable versus a box-ticking exercise: design principles
   - Defining wargame objectives: what decision-making capability do you want to test or develop
   - Scenario development: creating realistic, plausible, and educationally productive attack scenarios
   - Injects design: how to structure information releases that maintain realism and reveal decision points
   - Participant role allocation: assigning SOC, intelligence, leadership, legal, and communications roles effectively
7. **Module 7: Executive Wargame Design: Practical Workshop**
   - Participants design their own full tabletop wargame exercise during this structured workshop session
   - Scenario: a multi-stage nation-state attack against a critical sector organisation of their choosing
   - Injects: 12 to 20 structured information releases across the exercise timeline
   - Role assignments, facilitator guide, and debrief framework developed for Day 4 delivery
   - Peer review of wargame designs with instructor feedback before finalisation for Day 4
8. **Module 8: Wargame Delivery and Facilitation (Day 4 Part 1)**
   - Participants deliver their designed wargame exercises to the full cohort as participants
   - Facilitator coaching during delivery: instructor guidance on real-time adjustments and inject timing
   - Observer perspective: experiencing wargame design choices from the participant viewpoint
   - Capturing decision-making patterns: documenting gaps, effective responses, and improvement areas
   - Mid-exercise review: adjusting pace, inject complexity, and role engagement as the exercise runs
9. **Module 9: Wargame Debrief and Learning Extraction (Day 4 Part 2)**
   - Structured debrief methodology: what happened, what was decided, why, and what the consequences were
   - Gap analysis: identifying decision-making weaknesses, communication failures, and process gaps
   - Improvement prioritisation: converting wargame findings into a concrete remediation action plan
   - Instructor-led peer critique of each wargame design: what worked, what failed, and why
   - Building a repeatable wargame programme: frequency, scenario diversity, and participant rotation
10. **Module 10: Resilience Programme Design**
   - Defining organisational cyber resilience: what it means operationally, not just as a policy statement
   - Resilience programme architecture: governance, technical controls, human factors, and supply chain
   - Measurable resilience metrics: how to demonstrate improvement to boards, regulators, and insurers
   - Red team scheduling and integration: using offensive testing to drive defensive improvement continuously
   - Training cycle design: maintaining capability across SOC teams despite attrition and role change
11. **Module 11: Recovery and Reconstitution Operations**
   - Recovery strategy design: sequencing system restoration without reinfecting from compromised backups
   - Post-incident forensics at scale: preserving evidence while restoring operations under business pressure
   - Vendor and supply chain management during recovery: validating third-party systems before reconnection
   - Regulatory reporting during and after recovery: managing disclosure obligations across multiple authorities
   - Post-incident review methodology: converting an incident into a documented capability improvement
12. **Module 12: Building the Board-Level Resilience Strategy**
   - What a board-level cyber warfare resilience strategy must contain and how to structure it
   - Risk quantification for boards: translating threat scenarios into financial and operational impact ranges
   - Investment prioritisation: presenting a defensible case for cyber resilience spending to a sceptical board
   - Insurance and contractual resilience: cyber insurance, liability clauses, and third-party obligations
   - Regulatory alignment: demonstrating NIS2, DORA, and sector-specific compliance within the strategy
13. **Module 13: Government and CNI Coordination Frameworks**
   - How the UK government expects critical national infrastructure operators to prepare for and respond to nation-state attacks
   - Exercise Cyber UK and national cyber exercising programme: how organisations participate and what they gain
   - Cross-sector resilience: how energy, finance, healthcare, and communications sectors coordinate during a shared threat
   - NATO cyber resilience commitments: how UK critical sector operators contribute to collective defence
   - Building government relationships before a crisis: engagement, intelligence sharing, and liaison officer roles
14. **Module 14: Lessons Learned Integration and Programme Improvement**
   - Structured lessons learned methodology: converting incidents and exercises into durable programme improvements
   - Change management for security: embedding lessons learned improvements into operational teams
   - Tracking improvement over time: measuring the effect of lessons learned actions on resilience metrics
   - Building a continuous improvement culture: making lessons learned a valued professional activity
   - Sharing lessons across the sector: appropriate disclosure of incident learnings to improve collective resilience
15. **Module 15: Capstone: Board-Level Cyber Warfare Resilience Strategy**
   - Participants produce and present a complete cyber warfare resilience strategy for their scenario organisation
   - Strategy covers: threat assessment, current resilience gaps, prioritised investment plan, and governance framework
   - Present to a simulated board and government stakeholder panel including challenge questions
   - Regulatory alignment section demonstrates NIS2, sector-specific, and national cyber strategy obligations
   - Full instructor debrief: strategy quality, investment case, governance design, and presentation effectiveness

## Exam & certification

You will receive an Xcademia certificate of completion based on participation and successful completion of labs and scenario simulations.

## Delivery options

- **Live Online** — Join live instructor-led sessions from anywhere. Interactive, engaging, and flexible.
- **Onsite Training** — We come to you. Training delivered at your workplace for teams of 6 or more.
- **Venue-Based** — Classroom training at a professional venue. Ideal for focused, immersive learning.
- **Blended** — Combine online and in-person learning for maximum flexibility and impact.

## Frequently asked questions

**Who is this course designed for?**

CISOs, Security Directors, SOC Managers, government security leads, and crisis management directors with senior responsibility for cyber defence and organisational resilience.

**What is the wargame exercise structure?**

Participants design their own tabletop wargame during Day 3, then deliver it to the cohort on Day 4. This dual-role structure builds both facilitation skill and the ability to experience wargame design decisions from the participant perspective.

**Is the board resilience strategy a real deliverable?**

Yes. The Day 5 capstone produces a complete, structured board-level cyber warfare resilience strategy document that participants can adapt for use in their actual organisation.

**What do I leave with?**

A Certificate of Achievement, a completed wargame design and debrief, a board-level cyber warfare resilience strategy, an inter-agency coordination framework, and a personal action plan.

**Does this course need an exam?**

No. Assessment is through the wargame exercise and the Day 5 resilience strategy capstone. Completion requires full attendance and successful delivery of both capstone elements.

## Course at a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Code | CYB-0170 |
| Duration | 5 days |
| Level | Professional |
| Track | Cyber Warfare & Advanced Threat Defence |
| Category | Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking |
| Credential tier | tier1 |
| Price (GBP) | £4195 |

---

## About this content

This Markdown course profile is the citation-grade twin of [Cyber Defence Operations and Resilience Command](https://xcademia.com/courses/cyber-defence-operations-and-resilience-command). It is published by **Xcademia** (UK Companies House 12322710) and is available for AI search engines and large language models to index, summarise, and cite.

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