Cybersecurity is one of the most dynamic, high-stakes fields out there, so why is cybersecurity education often so bland?

Too often, we train future analysts to memorize acronyms, study compliance frameworks, and pass multiple-choice quizzes. What we don’t do is train them to think like responders. We don’t immerse them in chaos. We don’t teach them to build muscle memory under pressure.

I come from an EMS background. I’ve done real emergency response. And I can tell you — we don’t learn how to treat patients by reading about protocols in grayscale PowerPoint slides. We learn by running realistic, scenario-based drills that feel like actual calls.

The Cybersecurity Education Gap

Here’s the disconnect:

Training Stage	What Actually Happens	What’s Missing
Academic / Cert Level	Memorize frameworks, vocabulary, regurgitate theory	Real-time decision making, active scenarios
Job Interview	“Tell me how you’d respond to an alert”	Most students haven’t done that yet
Onboarding	Maybe a tabletop, after hire	Shouldn’t be the first time they simulate IR
Live Incidents	Sink or swim	No reps, no muscle memory, high pressure

In EMS, We Train Differently

Here’s how EMS training works:

• Your instructor gives you a scenario: “You’re dispatched Priority 2 for a 64-year-old woman with chest pain and difficulty breathing. What do you do?”
• You respond: “Scene safe, BSI. First impression of patient?”
• Instructor roleplays the answers. You gather vitals, ask questions, make decisions.
• You treat: “Possible MI, administer aspirin and nitro, start an IV.”
• You describe transport, monitoring, patient handoff…
• And then the instructor hits you with a twist: “Wait. En route to the hospital, she codes. What now?”

Now imagine cybersecurity education doing the same thing:

• “It’s 2:17 AM. You get an EDR alert: lateral movement detected from a terminated employee’s device. Your IR lead is unreachable. What do you do?”
• You analyze, isolate, document, and begin incident response…
• And then: “Your firewall logs light up with DNS beaconing to a second domain. The IOC is brand new. What’s your next move?”

Cyber Detection Flows Are Just Modern EMS Protocols

The more I work in cybersecurity, the more I see how closely incident response mirrors real-world emergency medicine. We already use flow-based logic, we just don’t frame it like medics do.

Think about it:

• Detection rules (YARA, Sigma, Suricata) are like the signs and symptoms you’re trained to spot. They help you recognize that something’s wrong, even before the full picture is clear.
• Exploitation flows and TTP chains are just the progression of disease — a threat doesn’t start with ransomware. It starts with initial access, then privilege escalation, lateral movement, and eventually encryption or data exfiltration. Just like a STEMI might start with discomfort and escalate into full cardiac arrest.
• IR playbooks mirror EMS protocols. If A, do B. If condition changes, switch to protocol C. This logic works in both fields.
• Splunk, ELK, and search tools are the equivalent of gathering patient history and diagnostics. You’re building a timeline and understanding cause and effect in real time.
• Suricata and Snort custom rules are like specialized medical interventions or judgment calls. You customize your detection and response based on what your environment needs, just like medics tailor care based on standing orders and medical direction.

When you look at it this way, cybersecurity doesn’t need to invent better educational models — it just needs to borrow from the professions that already train people to think clearly during chaos.

We Can Do Better

Stop designing cyber training like it’s a spelling bee. Design it like a trauma simulation. Let students respond to alerts, feel the escalation, and build muscle memory the same way medics do in their early training. If we do that, we’ll stop producing test-takers and start producing analysts who can think clearly in chaos.

Final Thoughts

We already have the framework to improve cybersecurity education — we just keep ignoring it. Professions like EMS have been training people to respond under pressure for decades. It works. It builds instinct. It creates professionals who do not panic when things spiral.

We need to stop obsessing over how well someone can explain the NIST framework in a classroom, and start asking how they would respond to a real alert at 2 AM, when no one is around, and the clock is ticking. The industry will be stronger when our training matches our reality.