Hack The Box launches its first ever pen testing certification

Hack The Box, the leading cybersecurity training and upskilling platform– built by hackers for hackers – with a rapidly growing community of 1.5m+ members worldwide, is today launching its first ever certification for penetration testers. The HTB Certified Penetration Testing Specialist (HTB CPTS) qualification and learning pathway was developed in response to market  demand for an affordable and practical pentester cert, and features hands-on learning content based on the latest real world attack scenarios and cyber criminal methodologies.

HTB CPTS provides IT security personnel with up-to-date and immediately applicable skills around penetration testing, allowing professionals to test the knowledge they already have as well as acquiring new expertise, including exposure and infrastructure risk assessment.

Technical skills are not the only vector of assessment. To become a certified penetration testing specialist and gain the HTB CPTS, students will also have to showcase communication and reporting skills, including writing a commercial-grade actionable report as part of the final exam. 

The HTB CPTS learning pathway is designed as an introduction to aspiring pen testers, as well as for experienced pen testers looking to be officially certified. The final exam can be accessed once the Penetration Tester job-role pathway onHTB Academyis complete.

A Hack The Box certified penetration tester will be able to demonstrate skills like core security assessment practices, along with a deep understanding of the specialised tools, attack techniques, and methodologies used for pen testing.The certification will guide partitioners to build practical skills to an intermediate level on the modules in HTB Academy.

Developed by subject matter experts from around the world, the HTB CPTS learning pathway consists of 28 different modules, in scaling difficulty and logical order, to enable a seamless learning experience. Each module is accompanied by practical lab and skills assessment exercises. By the end of the pathway, students will have had the opportunity to conduct 9 simulated (yet realistic) penetration tests and attack 270+ targets.

Haris Pylarinos, founder and CEO of Hack The Box, comments:

“As the volume and sophistication of cyber attacks ramp up, we are seeing an urgent demand forsecurity specialists with penetration testing skills. Cybersecurity professionals are seeing they need to adopt a hacking mindset. This means learning to think and act like attackers, so vulnerabilities are found before cybercriminals. 

“Knowledge that used to be only for red teams now requires awareness across blue teams too, so more and more security professionals are seeking to upskill.And we saw amarket needfor an affordable, practical and credible pentesting certification to meet this rapidly growing demand.    

“That’s why we’re launching the Certified Penetration Testing Specialist qualification on HTB Academy. Cybersecurity red and blue teams should be aware of the most common attack vectors and can get the hands-on experience needed to prevent them, while also  identifying security issues and avenues of exploitation that do not come up in simpler searches.“

For more information, and to get started on the journey to becoming a certified penetration tester, please visit the HTB CPTS landing page.