WBP SI study plan

Draft a written engagement methodology that states scope boundaries, rules of engagement, authorization checkpoints, and stop conditions before any technical work begins.

Build a reusable scoping worksheet that converts an asset list into an approved target list with in-scope ranges, excluded hosts, and named contacts.

Practice passive reconnaissance on a lab domain and classify each finding as passive-only, low-touch active, or intrusive.

Write a test-plan template that maps each planned activity to a detection risk level and a required approval.

Explain in your own notes how scope creep and unverified authorization cause the most common inspection failures.

Enumerate every host in a lab subnet using at least three independent discovery techniques and reconcile conflicts between results.

Classify each discovered asset by owner, criticality tier, and exposure so the inventory drives prioritization rather than just listing hosts.

Document service banners and version fingerprints for the discovered hosts and flag any asset that cannot be attributed to an owner.

Define an inventory schema with fields for hostname, IP, owner, environment, criticality, and last-verified date.

Assess host and service configuration against a defined baseline and record each deviation with evidence of the observed state.

Build a hardening checklist covering authentication, transport security, patch level, and unnecessary services, and apply it to at least three hosts.

Write a vulnerability hypothesis for each configuration weakness and state the exact test that would confirm or refute it.

Separate confirmed findings from suspected findings so unverified items never enter the final report as facts.

Verify at least five candidate vulnerabilities with a reproducible proof that includes request, response, and preconditions.

Practice safe verification technique: minimal payloads, no data destruction, and immediate stop-and-report on unintended impact.

Test a lab web application for injection, access-control, and session-handling weaknesses and record each attempt even when negative.

Assign severity using a documented scoring rationale rather than intuition, and justify each rating in two sentences.

Map a lab application's authentication, session, and authorization flows and identify where trust boundaries are enforced or missing.

Test input validation and output encoding across at least three parameter types and document which defenses held.

Review client-side controls and confirm whether server-side enforcement exists for each one.

Convert at least two verified web findings into clear business-impact statements a non-technical owner can act on.

Review available logs from the lab environment and determine which of your week 3-5 activities were detectable and which were not.

Write detection gaps as findings with the specific log source, expected signal, and observed absence.

Establish an evidence-handling procedure covering capture, hashing, storage, chain of custody, and retention.

Redact sensitive data from a sample evidence set while preserving the technical detail needed to reproduce the finding.

Assemble a full report with executive summary, methodology, findings, evidence appendix, and severity distribution.

Write remediation guidance for each finding that names the owner, the fix, and a verification method.

Build a remediation tracker with status states, due dates, and a re-test criterion for each item.

Map findings to a compliance framework control set and note where evidence satisfies or fails the control.

Re-test two previously confirmed findings and record closure status with fresh evidence.

Peer-review a sample report against a checklist for unsupported claims, missing evidence, and ambiguous severity.

Run a timed mixed-domain practice set and review every missed item to its root cause.

Consolidate weak areas into a one-page pre-exam review sheet covering methodology, severity rationale, and evidence rules.