PRESS RELEASE

BETHESDA, Md., July 10, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- SANS today announced that they have developed a new training program that is 80% hands-on learning.

Studies have shown that the best way to pick up new skills quickly is to practice them in a hands-on, real-world scenarios designed to challenge and guide a participant. This new hands-on format allows students to develop a deeper understanding of the concepts and focus on developing broad skills across many different security areas.

SEC561: Hands-On Security Practitioner with NetWars course creates a learning environment where participants can quickly build and reinforce skills in multiple focus areas, including:

-- Network security assessment, identifying architecture weaknesses in

network deployments

-- Host-based security assessment, protecting against privilege escalation

attacks

-- Web application penetration testing, exploiting common flaws in complex

systems

-- Advanced system attacks, leveraging pivoting and tunneling techniques to

identify exposure areas deep within an organization Joshua Wright, the course author, states "Hands-on security skills are what employers and security practitioners really need today to fight off increasingly sophisticated attacks. This course teaches in-depth security analysis capabilities through 80% hands-on exercises and labs, the most ever for a SANS course. Students work together with master instructor to learn how to solve increasingly demanding information security challenges that they can apply the day that they get back to their jobs."

This new course is launching at SANS Network Security 2013 in Las Vegas, NV on September 16,2013. To learn more and to register, please visit:

http://www.sans.org/info/134492

The Hands-On Security Practitioner course departs from most lecture-based training models to help practitioners quickly build skills in many different information security focus areas. Using the NetWars challenge platform, participants engage in practical and real-world defensive and offensive Capture the Flag (CtF) exercises that are fun and exciting. By maximizing hands-on time in exercises, participants build valuable skills that are directly applicable as soon as they return to the office.

Participants who complete the Hands-On Security Practitioner participate in realistic scenarios to quickly build skills that are difficult to achieve independently. After completing the course, participants will be able to apply these skills to various areas within their own organizations, significantly increasing their ability to take on cross-disciplinary projects and tasks.

Participants must have introductory-level experience with information security, but can quickly expand their hands-on technical skills.

To learn more about the new NetWars Hands-On Security Practitioner course and to register, please visit: http://www.sans.org/info/134487. If you would like to bring NetWars Tournament to your organization please email [email protected].

About SANS Institute

The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted, and by far the largest source for world-class information security training and security certification in the world offering over 50 training courses. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, is a certification body featuring over 20 hands-on, technical certifications in information security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; and it operates the Internet's early warning system - the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners in varied global organizations from corporations to universities working together to help the entire information security community. (www.SANS.org)