Cyber Defense Certified Professional (CDCP)
Awarded to jacob.davis on July 1, 2026
Description
The Cyber Defense Certified Professional (CDCP) is a fully practical SOC Analyst Tier 2 certification.
There is no multiple choice. Holders prove their skills by working through real security operations scenarios end to end like a working analyst. Over a one-week capstone, candidates complete five real-world incidents spanning host forensics, malware analysis, network traffic analysis, threat hunting, and threat intelligence.
For each incident, they produce a complete report: executive summary, technical findings, remediation, organizational risk impact, and the supporting evidence to justify their findings. Every report is manually reviewed by an instructor for accuracy, competency, and context.
A CDCP holder has demonstrated the knowledge, skill, and judgment to step onto a security operations team at the Tier 2 level and contribute from day one.
The CDCP is the fifth and final credential in the SOC Analyst Path, following the CDT, CDA, and CDR badges and the instructor-certified CDCA.
Criteria
Worked five real-world incidents end to end over a one-week practical capstone:
- Performed complete Windows forensics to uncover and confirm indicators of compromise, analyzing suspicious binaries with static and dynamic techniques
- Reconstructed malicious network traffic from packet capture
- Dissected malspam and phishing to expose the evasion, delivery, and exploitation techniques in use
- Hunted Windows event logs in a SIEM (ELK) to reconstruct the attacker's full activity timeline
- Produced executive and technical threat intelligence reporting, including OSINT and reconnaissance against adversary infrastructure
Report Criteria
Delivered an analyst-grade report for each incident for a total of five reports:
- IOC table of findings
- An executive summary
- Technical analysis
- Remediations & detection recommendations
- Supporting evidence to justify the findings
All five reports were manually reviewed by an Instructor to validate skill and competency.