What happens if I fail the exam?

You can retake it after a 24-hour cooldown, as many times as you need. Retakes are free, and each attempt draws a fresh random set of questions.

How long is a certificate valid?

The Safeguard Certified Practitioner credential is valid for 24 months from issue. The expiry date is printed on the certificate and shown live on its public verification page. Renewing means passing the current exam again.

Courses

Building Your Own Security Tool: From Script to Scanner

AdvancedFree5 modules · 15 lessons

About this course

An advanced course for Application Security (AppSec) practitioners on building a small security tool well. You will learn to choose the smallest useful detection, read untrusted targets safely, design honest machine readable output and exit codes, test against a labelled corpus, and package and release the tool responsibly to a team.

What you'll learn

Choosing the Smallest Useful Detection

Starting Narrow: Why the Smallest Useful Detection Beats a Broad, Shallow One
Writing a Specification Before Any Code
Scoping a Genuine Version One

Reading the Target Safely

Every Target Is Hostile Input: The Core Assumption of a Safe Scanner
Archive and Package Handling: Zip Bombs, Symlinks and Path Traversal
Resource Limits as a Design Requirement, Not an Afterthought
Sandboxing and Least Privilege: What a Scanner Should Never Need

Machine Readable Output and CI Behaviour

Designing Output Another Tool Can Consume Reliably
Exit Codes and Continuous Integration Behaviour
Severity and Confidence as Separate, Honest Fields

Performance, Testing and Packaging

Incremental Runs and Caching: Only Rescanning What Changed
Building a Labelled Corpus as a First Class Deliverable
Packaging and Distribution: Making a Teammate Actually Want to Install It

Releasing to a Team

Versioning and a Changelog a User Can Actually Act On
Shipping Responsibly: Shadow Mode, Staged Enablement, and Where This Course Points Next

01Choosing the Smallest Useful Detection3 lessons

Starting Narrow: Why the Smallest Useful Detection Beats a Broad, Shallow One
Writing a Specification Before Any Code
Scoping a Genuine Version One

02Reading the Target Safely4 lessons

Common questions

How much does Safeguard Academy cost?

Nothing. Every course, exam, and certificate on the catalog is free — including retakes. All you need is a free Safeguard account.

What are the prerequisites?

None. The flagship course, Safeguard Certified Practitioner, is a beginner-level course — basic familiarity with how software is built helps, but every exam question is answerable from the lessons themselves.