SANS Dublin Taster Day Recap

On Thursday, 13 November 2025, SANS hosted an action-packed afternoon of hands-on workshops and interactive sessions, bringing cybersecurity professionals from across Ireland and the UK together in Dublin.

As one of Europe’s fastest-growing cyber hubs, the city provided the perfect backdrop for a programme that blended technical exploration with strategic simulations, delivering practical insights and immediate, real-world impact for attendees.

Hands-On Sessions: Technical Depth and Strategic Simulation

SANS Certified Instructor, Taz Wake, started the afternoon with a threat landscape briefing. Attendees then chose from two sessions that balanced practical skills with real-world relevance:

• Byte by Byte: Cracking Data and Files with Kat Hedley: Participants took a deep-dive into how digital data works. They mastered the fundamentals of data conversion (manually and with tools) across binary, hexadecimal, decimal, and ASCII. They then dug deeper, revealing how files can conceal their true identity.

“I really enjoyed the lecture by Taz Wake, I also enjoyed the challenges in the Byte-by-Byte, with Kat Hedley, I learnt about new tools for decoding”

– Byte by Byte Attendee.

• CISO Challenge Simulation with Jan D’Herdt: In this team based simulation, attendees stepped into the role of a CISO facing real-world-inspired organisational challenges that tested their strategic thinking. They were tasked with strengthening security culture, managing crises, and making decisions under pressure where every decision, from training to incident response, affected their score.

“Jan is an excellent presenter. He spoke clearly and with enthusiasm. He is very charismatic and he appeared to be very knowledgeable in the areas that the course covered which were wide reaching. The class was interactive and the "gamification" of the class was brilliantly done. He made risk and governance fun in a way I have never seen it be done.”

– CISO Challenge Simulation Attendee

Cyber Quiz + Community Networking

The event closed with a high-energy Cyber Quiz hosted by Taz Wake and Kat Hedley. More than trivia, the quiz reinforced the key learning outcomes while fostering new connections across Irish and UK cybersecurity communities.

Outcomes

Organisations often struggle to bridge the gap between training and operational application. This event proved that, with the right structure, even a two-hour session can enhance practitioner capability and confidence.

“This was one of the brightest experiences I had so far in cybersecurity.”

– CISO Challenge Simulation Attendee.

The Dublin Taster Day offered something fundamentally different. Our instructors designed fully interactive, hands-on workshop experiences that placed learners at the centre of the action. Participants weren’t just listening to concepts, they were practising skills, solving challenges, and collaborating in real time. This shift to immersive, task-driven learning created a deeper, more immediate connection to the material and showcased the practical impact of SANS training in action.