Why Blue Team careers are growing
Blue Teams protect organisations from real-world attacks. They monitor networks, detect intrusions, and respond before damage spreads. According to the SANS Institute, defensive roles make up the majority of global cybersecurity demand.
While Red Team work often gets more attention, Blue Team specialists keep companies running safely. For anyone entering cybersecurity, this path offers long-term stability, growth, and a chance to make measurable impact.
Step 1: Learn the defender mindset
Every great analyst starts by understanding what “normal” looks like on a system. When you know baseline behaviour, anomalies become clear.
Focus first on concepts like log analysis, network traffic, and system monitoring. The SOC Level 1 Pathway on TryHackMe introduces these ideas in guided, practical labs that simulate how analysts investigate alerts in real environments.
💡 Tip: Before diving into tools, think like an investigator. Ask what evidence tells you, not just what command to run.
Step 2: Build detection and monitoring skills
Detection is visibility. A skilled analyst can read a log and instantly see whether something belongs. Through structured labs in the SOC Level 1 Pathway, you’ll practise correlating events, spotting malicious traffic, and differentiating harmless noise from real threats.
Step 3: Practise investigation
Once you can recognise suspicious activity, learn to prove what happened.
Investigation involves collecting evidence, analysing artefacts, and creating clear reports. These are the same habits SOC analysts use daily: methodical, repeatable, and defensible.
💡 Tip: Treat every alert as a story. The goal is to show cause and impact in a way a manager or client could understand.
Step 4: Connect skills to real SOC workflows
Security Operations Centers handle dozens of alerts at once. Analysts prioritise, escalate, and document everything. The SOC Level 1 Pathway walks you through that workflow from triage to report, helping you understand both the technical and communication sides of the job.
Step 5: Validate your skills
Once you’ve gained confidence, prove it through the Security Analyst Level 1 (SAL1) certification. It tests your ability to handle real incidents rather than memorise facts, making it a credible first step before vendor-neutral options like CompTIA or GIAC.
Employers value candidates who can demonstrate practical results, not just pass theoretical exams.
Step 6: Plan your next move
Once you’ve built your foundation, you can specialise:
Threat Hunter – proactively search for attacker behaviour in data.
Incident Responder – contain and remediate active threats.
Detection Engineer – create detection logic and automated alerts at scale.
Each branch grows from the same fundamentals: analysis, curiosity, and clear communication. Explore future progression paths to see where your skills can take you.
Final takeaway
A Blue Team career rewards curiosity and persistence. The more you practise detection, analysis, and reporting, the more instinctive your decision-making becomes.
Build that foundation through the SOC Level 1 Pathway and validate your expertise by getting certified with SAL1, all on TryHackMe. That combination gives you the credibility and hands-on experience to move confidently into SOC or threat-response roles.
Start your Blue Team journey today and turn investigation skills into a professional career.
Nick O'Grady