CCDL1 (Certified CyberDefender Level 1 Certification) Review

CCDL1

Introduction

Hello everyone! It is me Chicken0248 again and in this blog. We will talk about the Certified CyberDefender Level 1 (CCDL1) certification! which is the newest certification from the CyberDefenders platform which is well-known for their cyber range for blue team labs, and I even made some labs for them as well!

CyberDefenders also have 1 certification that already well-known in the cybersecurity industry which is CCD (Certified CyberDefender) but as you can see the trend of Cybersecurity that involves around Junior SOC Analyst and SOC L1, many Cybersecurity platform including big player like TryHackMe also making their own SOC L1 certification to jump on this trend and get some piece of cakes.

SOC Analyst Training & Certification — CCDL1

Since CCD (which we can now call it CCDL2) is known as “intermediate” to “advanced” cybersecurity certification for blue teamer and SOC analyst, they finally came up with new certification for SOC L1 that is “CCDL1” and I was fortunate enough join the beta access for the course and exam so this review is only valid for certain period of time as some of contents or exam can be changed and adjust anytime!

Course Experience

Let’s talk about pricing first. The reason I start with pricing is to set expectations: this certification is positioning itself as one of the best SOC certifications currently available. CCDL1 is priced at USD 500, which puts it on par with BTL1 (GBP 399 ≈ USD 500), its most direct competitor and one of the most established SOC L1 certifications in the current market.

It’s clear that the CyberDefenders team wants a serious share of the SOC training market, and to do that, they need to differentiate themselves. That differentiation is very visible in the course content, which I’ll explain below.

The CCDL1 course is divided into six modules that you will have to finish in four months:

• SOC & Threat Intelligence Foundations
• Network & Endpoint Essentials
• SIEM Basics (Splunk & Sentinel)
• Phishing & Email Security
• Digital Forensics and Incident Response
• Cloud Security & AI

(Check out full syllabus here)

Each module focuses on a different area. Some topics cover mandatory SOC fundamentals, while others go well beyond what is typically expected from a SOC L1 analyst. In many cases, the course teaches advanced concepts and real execution, things that most L1 analysts won’t actually get to implement unless they work in a startup or a very lean SOC environment.

Even for me — having taken multiple SOC courses and certifications such as BTL1, SAL1, PSAA, and HTB CDSA — there were sections that I struggled with. Topics like Microsoft Sentinel, rkhunter, OpenCTI, and AWS log analysis were either new to me or covered at a much deeper level than I expected.

And yes, the course covers Cloud (AWS) and Microsoft Sentinel, which is still surprisingly rare in most SOC-focused courses on the market today.

Since I’m a beta tester, I’ve seen how the content looked initially and how much it evolved over time. Early on, I didn’t engage heavily with the course because there was clearly a lot of room for improvement. Later, CyberDefenders announced that they would revoke beta access and refund users who showed little to no activity, as their main goal for the beta phase was to collect feedback.

They also launched a beta-only leaderboard event, where participation was measured by completing labs, lessons, investigations, and providing feedback. The top three participants would receive a CyberDefenders subscription (for the cyber range part of the platform). That’s when I decided to speedrun the course — and honestly, I was impressed. The labs are well-designed and come with detailed walkthroughs, which are extremely useful for learning the correct mindset and investigation approach when you get stuck.

In addition to labs, each module includes its own “Investigation”, which you can think of as a post-knowledge test. These investigations do not include walkthroughs. However, participants can discuss findings and ask for hints on Discord, as each investigation has its own dedicated discussion channel.

For those wondering what tools are used throughout the course, I’ve put together a (non-exhaustive) list below:

• OpenCTI
• TOR Browser
• AlienVault OTX
• VirusTotal and other malware sandboxes such as Any.Run and Hybrid Analysis
• Wireshark
• Splunk
• Microsoft Sentinel
• AWS Log Analyzer
• n8n
• oletools
• GoPhish
• log2timeline
• Eric Zimmerman’s tools (not all of them) and KAPE
• DB Browser for SQLite
• Autopsy
• FTK Imager
• Volatility
• rkhunter
• AIDE

And the list goes on.

Although the certification name suggests that it is designed for SOC L1, in my opinion the course content already exceeds what an average SOC L1 analyst would normally do. Examples include:

• Decrypting Cobalt Strike C2 traffic
• Shellcode extraction and debugging from email attachments
• n8n workflow integration with Splunk and threat intelligence automation

Without a solid foundation, you will get stuck. That said, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The provided walkthroughs are detailed and useful, allowing you to learn new techniques and gradually build a stronger foundation.

If I had to give this course a score, I’d rate it 4.8/5. It is a long and dense course, but the content is information-rich, the walkthroughs are detailed, and the topic coverage spans both essential and advanced areas.

Now, let’s move on to how you can prepare for the exam in the next section.

Exam Preparation

CyberDefender have “Exam readiness” feature where it tracks how much progress you made though the course, and it will feel like this is just to track completion more than readiness, it can boost your confidence when it reach 90% (majority of the score comes from investigations and labs) and the exam will test your knowledge for every modules you took hence the “Exam readiness”

To prepare for an exam, I reviewed all modules again and this time, I also made “an index” which is a list of content taught in each topic / lab and its hyperlink so I could jump straight to that topic if I ever encountered similar things in the exam.

For those who wonder if I have any labs that I would recommend them practicing making them feel more confidence and ready for the exam. To be honest I think the labs and investigation in course are enough as any of lab I could think of from their Cyber Range will be “too much” in some sense and can even make you feel unprepared.

And just that, I didn’t do more of preparation since this is SOC L1 exam and I already completed 99% of the course (that 1% was my laziness) and I waited for quite a while until exam is finally released but one thing we know that they planned to have MCQ exam where all questions will not be a “theory-based” but “practical” where we need to conduct actual investigation first before selecting the “correct” choice, I can understand why they went with this route as MCQ can give their students the instant result without need for manual grading as CCD exam. i’m glad that they didn’t go with SAL1 or OffSec Gauntlet approach while they have LLM / AI grade our exam.

My Exam Experience

Couple of months passed and on the 18th of January 2026. an email was sent to me to try out the exam, As I said earlier that I was 1 of 10 fortunate soul to test the exam and since 19th of January 2026 is Monday, and I will get busy after Tuesday, so I attempted the exam right away after getting enough rest from my day job

Once I clicked start the exam, I had to select which region for the exam instance to response which will directly affect performance of the exam lab environment. once selected, I waited for 6–8 minutes to let it finish provisioning once it’s completed then I finally started my exam.

https://help.cyberdefenders.org/en/articles/13559732-format-and-domains-covered

In the exam, all information needed for the exam was presented to me right away and as I said in the previous section, The exam is MCQ-format (multiple choice questions) but it does not like MCQ from CompTIA CySA+ and SAL1, all MCQ are technical-based questions where you have to perform your analysis to find the “correct” answer and then I just realized that I only have 5 hours to finish all questions so after exploring exam lab environment, I finally made my first move and then everything was a breeze, it does bring the bar back to where SOC L1 certification should be

https://help.cyberdefenders.org/en/articles/13559832-scoring-grading-feedback-and-rewards

In order to pass CCDL1 exam, you will need to get at least 70% of the score so once you opened the exam and know how many questions you have to solve then you can start calculating how many questions need to pass the exam rightaway.

Within 3 hours (could be faster but I was ordering my dinner while doing an exam), I finally submitted my exam and wow that’s 90%++ score right there. although I thought I could 100% it but I felt like I 90%++ is already enough and if there ever make a gold coin for CCDL1 later then I would still get it (nothing different at all, pass is still pass, no matter the score)

The “View Feedback” button reveals what domain I did great and what to improve which is expected since there is 2 area that I was too lazy to find the answer

After passed the exam, my discord profile is automatically granted with “Certified CyberDefender” role, although this role was made for CCD. since there is no CCDL1 role right now so I gladly accepted it.

And I forget to mention that CCDL1 cert valid for four years after issued which CyberDefender team want the same practice as other cert that have to renew by continue learning in the field, although they promised that it is not about money and we will have a way to get “CPE” credit by doing labs on their cyber range in the future but for now, there is no “clear” picture of what it will be so take it as a grain of salt for now

https://help.cyberdefenders.org/en/articles/13559832-scoring-grading-feedback-and-rewards

As CCDL1 is still in early stage of release, no physical reward is finalized yet so we can only get digital certificate, badge, role in discord and profile. I hope we can get a physical certification and gold coin (for those we get 90% or higher like CCD) in the future.

That’s it for my exam experience, quite short actually and the next section will be my final review of this certification and course.

My Final Review (Finally)

In my opinion, CCDL1 is one of the best SOC courses currently available on the market. The content goes well beyond what is typically expected from a SOC Level 1 role. It covers Microsoft Sentinel, AWS, Cobalt Strike C2 traffic analysis, shellcode extraction, and a little bit of malware analysis — topics that are more commonly associated with advanced SOC or DFIR positions.

That said, CCDL1 is still suitable for SOC L1 analysts, but it is not an easy course. Anyone new to cybersecurity or early in their SOC journey should expect to struggle at times. The learning curve is steep, as the course does not stop at fundamentals and frequently dives into advanced concepts and real-world execution. Without a solid foundation, the material can feel overwhelming — but it is also very rewarding if you push through it.

If you manage to digest the content, truly understand it, and later land a SOC role, you may find that many SOC L1 positions in the current market are largely focused on alert triage — deciding which alerts to escalate and which to close — with limited exposure to DFIR work or automation. In that sense, CCDL1 can leave you feeling overqualified for some entry-level SOC roles.

There are, of course, exceptions. In certain countries or organizations — especially those building or operating a SOC from the ground up — this depth of knowledge is extremely valuable and helps bridge significant technical gaps.

To be clear, the labs, the course content and exam are excellent. The issue is not quality, but expectation management. CCDL1 is ideal for anyone who wants to go beyond basic SOC alert handling and gain hands-on experience with Microsoft Sentinel, AWS, and real-world attack analysis. SOC L1 analysts can absolutely benefit from this course, as long as you are prepared to struggle, learn, and grow through more advanced material.

Exam Tips & Key Takeaway

• Indexing what to look for in the course, this will help you go back to it when you found something that you have done it before but did not remember exact commands or queries
• Make your incident timeline
• If possible, make your own query and command cheat sheet wherever it is a command for volatility, EZ Tools or query for Splunk, AWS and etc. (I made one when I’m playing threat hunting lab on their cyber range and I didn’t have to craft a new query in the exam
• If you have to use tool that will print the output to STDOUT, pipe it to a text file so you can come back and read it later
• When you are doing labs, make sure to also read walkthrough as it shows the mindset for the course author that will help you in the exam later

That’s it for today, good luck to everyone who going for this exam

Peace ✌️