Over the past several years, the field of detection engineering has become more and more at the forefront of cyber security defense discussions. While the number of conference talks, blog posts, and webcasts surrounding detection engineering has increased, a dedicated book on the topic has not yet appeared on the market. We hope that we can fill the gap with the release of this book. While learning resources for related fields such as threat hunting, threat intelligence, and red teaming are plentiful, detection engineering has a long way to go in providing the training necessary to develop detection engineers.

Our goal is to not only provide a discussion on the topic but to provide you with practical skills using hands-on exercises throughout the book. Furthermore, we hope that these exercises, in combination with the creation of the detection engineering test lab, lead you to continue your education and training by practicing the skills you’ve learned for your own use cases.

The authors of this book have worked in various areas of security, with a current focus on detection engineering, and derived this content from real-life experiences throughout their careers. This, combined with research taken from some of the top minds in this field, provides you with a comprehensive overview of the topics necessary to understand detection engineering. With topics including the detection engineering life cycle, creating and validating detections, careers guidance for detection engineers, and everything in between, you should walk away feeling confident in your understanding of what detection engineering is and what it means to the cyber security industry.

We hope this book inspires continued content creation and community contributions in detection engineering.