My Free-Tier Training Plan for the Rest of 2026

No bootcamp, no license — just the free-tier reps that build the actual muscle. Here's that plan made specific, so you can hold me to it.

One of the quiet promises in my November–December roadmap was this: steady, free-tier practice all the way to the end of the year. So here's that part spelled out, out loud.

TryHackMe: where I'm going next

I've worked through the free intro rooms — Junior Security Analyst Intro, SOC Role in Blue Team, Intro to Log Analysis, the MS Sentinel and KQL intros. That built the foundation. Now I want to go deeper on the blue-team path and string the rooms into something that feels like a real workflow, not scattered one-offs.

The focus for the rest of 2026: more hands-on log analysis, SIEM, and detection rooms — the skills that map straight to a Tier 1 SOC role, and straight to the Tiger Cloud detection lab I'm building this month. I'll keep working the free tier, and I'll show the work as I go.

Other free platforms I want to try

I don't want to live on one platform. A couple of others I'm eyeing, each with a real free option as of right now (though these change, so I'll verify again before I commit):

• LetsDefend — its free Basic tier includes SOC-focused starter courses and a set of free SOC-analyst alerts to investigate each month. That alert-triage practice is exactly the reasoning a detection job tests, so it's near the top of my list.

  
  

• TryCyber (trycyber.us) — I found this one in a cybersecurity webinar I attended, which is half the point: I'm not just watching the talks; I'm trying the tools they point to. It's free, runs right in the browser (no download), and uses short, hands-on "micro-challenges" built around exploring real cyber work roles. A low-friction way to sample skills I haven't touched yet.

  
  

I'm deliberately not naming every platform yet, because "free" has a way of quietly becoming "free trial." I'd rather verify each one before I send you to it than list a wall of links that may have changed.

The deal

Go deeper on TryHackMe's blue-team rooms, add a new free platform or two, and keep the reps steady through December. No shortcuts, no spending — just consistency.

I'm pulling the fully verified, link-by-link version of this into a free-path guide for Cyber Monday (Nov 30) — the honest map for anyone who wants to build these skills without paying for them. This is the sketch; that's the real thing.

Hold me to it. 💜

Storm to SOC — read the map, then move.