What You’ll Learn in TripleTen’s Cyber Security Bootcamp

Cyber security is one of the most in-demand and resilient career paths, offering a wide range of opportunities across industries. TripleTen’s Cyber Security Bootcamp is designed to equip students with the practical skills needed to enter the field, regardless of their prior technical experience. Through a project-based curriculum, hands-on labs, and expert mentorship by cybersecurity professionals working within the field, students gain real-world experience in defensive security strategies and threat mitigation. The cyber security curriculum team at TripleTen shares insights into what students will learn and how to thrive in the field as a newcomer. Plus, learn how TripleTen’s job guarantee, dedicated career support, and externship ensure student success after bootcamp graduation!

What makes cyber security such a good career path in 2025?

In a technologically disruptive era, cyber security is one of the more permanent fields that you can decide to go into. It exists because of the complexity of all of these different technological systems fitting together, and things are only getting more complex. That means job projections for cyber security are projected to grow for many years, and while some parts may be automated by AI, a lot cannot be automated away.

Do you need to know how to code to get into cyber security?

No, you don't need to know how to code. Cyber security is a very technical field, but coding is not a prerequisite for doing the work. What is important is being able to grasp at a high level how different systems work together. This is one of the reasons why there are so many job openings in cyber security: it requires a generalist knowledge that a lot of training programs and schools don't know how to impart to people. The cyber security field is very diverse — many different job roles are available to you once you’ve got the foundations down. And those roles can all look quite different in terms of what you're actually doing on a daily basis. When somebody tells you that they work in cyber security, it doesn't tell you much about what they're doing on the job — there are so many subspecialties you can end up in. You might be spending all day reconstructing attacks from logs, like a digital archaeologist playing Sherlock (SOC analyst). You might be imagining and implementing attack strategies that a real attacker would use — then building systems that stop those attacks in their tracks (pentester). You might be a mad scientist spending hours poking at malicious software in sandboxes to figure out how it works, how to detect it, and who wrote the thing in the first place (malware analyst, reverse engineer). Or you might be diving into somebody’s crisis situation, helping a company navigate responding to and recovering from a devastating cyberattack (incident responder). These are all career paths within cyber security. That means there’s something for everyone who wants to work in cyber security. At TripleTen, we are introducing students to different aspects of the field, so once they have baseline knowledge, they can figure out what appeals to them most.

Is there an ideal candidate for TripleTen’s Cyber Security Bootcamp?

We have a diverse group of people who enroll at TripleTen! This makes sense because a lot of people who are successful in cyber security have backgrounds that have nothing to do with cyber security. What's more predictive of whether or not you're going to succeed in the field are certain personality traits. 

Folks who tend to do well in the field have an innate curiosity. They're very interested in things that they don't understand, and they don’t get intimidated when they don't understand something. Instead, they want to dig into it. You should also be someone who wants to understand how things work. You don't learn things just because someone told you to. You learn things because you want to understand what's going on. Cyber security also requires a huge amount of creativity. You need to think outside the box. You need to always be asking the questions that others wouldn't think to ask. Task completion and resiliency are also very important. Cyber security professionals don’t give up easily and are persistent in completing a task — they want to see the process through to the end.

Is the TripleTen Cyber Security Bootcamp appropriate for tech beginners?

Absolutely! At TripleTen, we assume incoming students have no prior technical knowledge. We assume that they know how to use a browser on a computer, but we will teach you everything else about how computers work. 

What does the TripleTen Cyber Security Bootcamp curriculum cover?

The cyber security bootcamp operates on a project-based curriculum. It's less like taking a college course and more like apprenticing under an expert. The tasks are divided into sprints, and each sprint is concluded with a project where you have to create an authentic work product that is similar to something you would do on the job. Your work is reviewed by experts who give you feedback before you move on to the next project. Cyber security students will complete a series of 13 projects.

Most of the curriculum is focused on defensive skills because offensive skills like penetration testing are easy to pick up on your own — you don’t need to have access to a realistic, complex environment to learn to use most pentesting tools. We also focus on defensive skills because the vast majority of entry-level roles are in defense, and these are skills that can be quite difficult to learn on your own. During the bootcamp, students will:

• Critique and secure a particular network. 

• Perform scanning and enumeration to determine the footprint of a company and its vulnerabilities. 

• Use standard cyber security frameworks like NIST’s CSF to assess a business and determine appropriate and effective protections. 

• Threat model and identify attack vectors that exist within their infrastructure using industry-standard tools like the MITRE ATT&CK matrix. 

• Use incident response playbooks and craft an Incident Response Plan (IRP) appropriate to a company’s threat model. 

• Deploying and tuning a SIEM for performing continuous security monitoring.

• Perform a vulnerability assessment, confirm the findings with in-scope exploitation, and then remediate the confirmed vulnerabilities. 

• Security incident triage and investigations with Splunk: starting with minor security incidents, then ramping up to a more complex enterprise incident that takes place over a day. The capstone investigation involves getting to the bottom of an APT-style attack spanning on-prem and cloud infrastructure. 

Has TripleTen incorporated AI into the cyber security bootcamp curriculum?

We are actively adding a module to the end of the bootcamp that is specifically about AI. It covers all of the major ways that AI systems can be attacked by malicious actors (prompt injection, adversarial attacks, data poisoning, model stealing, backdoors); the project for that module involves participating in a popular AI CTF and successfully doing several prompt injection attacks, then writing a blog about the experience. We also have a generative AI module that teaches basic prompt engineering, namely how to recognize different types of buggy output from LLMs. The project for this module is automating a repetitive task using a template or an AI agent, then publishing a blog post describing how you designed and tested your AI solution. 

We put a lot of thought into how we're adding AI into the curriculum because AI and AI tools change so quickly. At TripleTen, we emphasize the foundational skills that will be useful regardless of what tool is popular by the time you graduate. We feel that being able to debug output from AI-powered tools and automating repetitive tasks are some of the most useful things that you can bring into an entry-level tech role — and will allow you to use more complex tools more effectively.

We’re dedicated to keeping our content up-to-date to give our students the most future-proofed skills. Graduates from our bootcamp enjoy lifetime access to any updates and additional content we add to the bootcamp as we grow the program.

What is the time commitment like for the cyber security bootcamp?

The cyber security bootcamp is part-time, so we expect students to commit about 20 hours a week. Technically, however, you can progress through the program as quickly as you can produce the project deliverables required to pass each sprint — so there is nothing stopping students from committing to learning full-time. Many of our students are also working full-time while attending the bootcamp; we understand that life can get in the way, and students can ask for extensions or take breaks if needed.

Who are the instructors for the cyber security bootcamp?

All of our instructors and tutors are people who have day jobs in cyber security and enjoy teaching newbies. We have put together a diverse team with many specializations so our students get exposure to a wide range of professional perspectives. Several of our tutors are cyber security team leads with lots of experience mentoring new analysts and growing cyber security teams. They know what companies are looking for and how to help talented, new cyber security specialists grow. Students have access to the tutors and instructors through the chatroom at all times, and they can also schedule one-on-ones. Plus, there are regular tutoring hours for additional support!

In addition to our team of expert tutors, each student is also given access to a Learning Coach who helps them make realistic plans to stay on track, manage workload, adjust learning strategies — and anything else a student might need to make it through the bootcamp. We believe strongly in giving students all the support they need to succeed.

What kinds of projects or labs will students work on in the bootcamp?

Half of the units involve a significant hands-on component where you have to work within a lab environment that we provide. During the sprints, students will be working on investigations, like triaging security incidents using Splunk. We want students to be very familiar with Splunk's interface because the vast majority of employers use Splunk or SIEM software similar to it.

One of the things that sets TripleTen apart from other bootcamps is that we provide the lab environment for students. We don't expect you to set it up, so you don't need to buy a special computer to participate in this bootcamp. You just need a computer with a working mouse, a keyboard, and a browser. We wanted the barrier to entry to be as low as possible. 

Are there opportunities for students to work with one another in the bootcamp?

All of the projects are done individually, but we do have a group activity — Backdoors and Breaches — that’s like a cyber security board game similar to Dungeons & Dragons. In the game, students are responding to a security incident. The team of students decides together on the best path to get to the bottom of the incident as quickly as possible. An expert tutor is around to help students  learn to make good decisions. You win the game if you figure out the incident before your team runs out of turns.

There's also a communal chatroom at TripleTen where students can talk to each other. Our experts are regularly posting interesting news items there. Several of our externship opportunities may involve some group work where students work on a team to come up with the deliverable for a client.

Does TripleTen prepare students for cyber security certifications?

Yes, a voucher for the CompTIA Security+ exam is included with tuition. We split the certification exam preparation into two sections, and students start preparing for the exam halfway through the bootcamp. At that point, we give them flashcards and study materials they need to memorize so they will have a few months to integrate that information. At the end of the bootcamp, we walk students through the exam and they will complete practice exams. We don't let our students sign up for the official exam until they have passed at least three practice exams with a score of 85%. 

What cyber security roles does TripleTen prepare students for?

We are primarily preparing students to be SOC analysts — cyber security professionals who conduct investigations, do incident response, and work within a Security Operations Center (SOC). SOC analysts are in demand because every business needs them. TripleTen students are also well prepared for entry-level IT roles with a security focus because they will have a comprehensive understanding of the way systems work together and how to secure them. 

Students who have prior experience within a particular industry might land more sophisticated roles. For example, if somebody was a nurse and switching into cyber security, they may land a role in a hospital or medical establishment’s SOC because they are already familiar with that environment. Having familiarity with an industry will often help you get your foot in the door with entry-level cyber security roles.

TripleTen offers its students externships! What kinds of externships will cyber security students be eligible for?

We are confirming the details with our externship partners, but so far, there may be externships at a Security Operations Center that needs help writing up detections. They would give students information about what needs to be alerted on, and the student will have to come up with a proper template (like a SIGMA rule) for properly detecting it. The student’s work would be reviewed by our experts before being passed on to the externship partner. 

The other possible externship is having students work with small businesses that need security advice. Students would perform a security assessment and share their findings with the business owner. 

TripleTen offers cyber security students a job guarantee! What career services will TripleTen cyber security bootcamp students receive? 

At TripleTen, we really care about our student outcomes! We have a unified career curriculum that all students have access to, but we also have specific lessons tailored to each industry. In cyber security, we help students learn how to interact with the larger community because that is a big part of finding mentors and getting their foot in the door. We help students attend their first hacker conference, and how to participate appropriately in a cyber security chat room. A big part of entering the industry is understanding the culture, and our curriculum reflects that; we care deeply about our students being able to properly integrate with the larger cyber security community so our graduates have the best chance to succeed in their new career. Students will also learn how to conduct a job search effectively, create a solid resume, and do practice interviews with our experts. In addition to guidance on conducting job searches and navigating interviews, our career curriculum covers content essential for succeeding in your first role after you’ve landed the job — we teach you how to be an effective team member by communicating well with others, resolving conflicts, and taking self-care seriously to prevent burn out. Plus, we offer externships, so students get real-world experience before they’ve graduated from the program!

What are your tips to incoming students on making the most of the cyber security bootcamp?

Find something about cyber security that really excites you. I've been involved in cyber security bootcamps since 2017, and the biggest predictor of student success is whether a student finds something that excites them about the industry. The students who just want a high salary tend not to survive in the industry, even if they did well in the bootcamp — they get burnt out after a few years. You need to find your joy and follow it.

Find out more and read TripleTen reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with TripleTen.