CRTP
Certified Red Team Professional
Hands-on Active Directory attacker — Kerberos abuse, trust attacks, and lateral movement against a real multi-domain forest.
› Quality score
Four-axis SecProve rubric, each 0–10. SecProve editorial assessment — each axis carries a written justification so you can push back on any single call without dismissing the whole score.
› Market signals
public, citable inputs to the recognition scoreVendor doesn't publish exact holder counts; estimate based on community indicators.
› Built for these roles
› Exam format
24-hour hands-on lab exam against a multi-domain Windows AD forest, followed by 48 hours to submit a written report. Five flag captures required across enumeration, privilege escalation, and cross-domain compromise.
› Recertification
Credential is permanent — no recertification or AMF.
› NICE Framework work roles
The NIST NICE work-role IDs this cert maps to. NICCS lookup.
› Core domains covered
The 2 domains this cert is centrally about. Passing the exam demonstrates working knowledge of each.
Methodology (OSSTMM, PTES), web/network/mobile pentesting, social engineering, purple teaming.
AuthN/AuthZ, SSO, MFA, PAM, RBAC/ABAC, identity governance, FIDO2/passkeys, plus non-human identity: service accounts, workload identity, agent / plugin identities.
› Also touched
Present in the blueprint but not the primary focus — you’ll be introduced but shouldn’t expect depth.
Firewalls, IDS/IPS, network segmentation, DNS security, SD-WAN, VPN, traffic analysis, wireless security.
SIGMA/YARA/Suricata rule writing, hypothesis-driven hunting, log deep-dives, detection gap analysis.
AI-assisted pentesting, automated recon, AI-generated phishing/social engineering, deepfake attacks.
› Prerequisites
Comfort with Windows command line, PowerShell, and basic AD concepts. Prior pentesting exposure recommended but not strictly required — the course covers fundamentals.
- Active Directory objects, trusts, and Kerberos
- PowerShell scripting basics
- Windows privilege model and tokens
› Progression
requiredrecommendedWhere this cert fits in the typical learning path. Required edges are vendor-gated; recommended edges reflect de facto industry progression.
No vendor-gated prereqs.
No certs require this one.
› Careers that commonly pursue this cert
External-first role: inventories what an attacker can see, tracks what's new, and drives closure through the org. The outside-in counterpart to vuln management.
› Common exam traps to study
Cybersecurity cert exams reuse the same 25 distractor patterns over and over — category confusion, RTO vs RPO, IDS vs IPS, MD5 vs SHA-256, and more. Once you can name the trap, you stop falling for it. Each archetype page covers what it is, the specific pairs candidates confuse, and how to avoid it.
See this cert’s domains highlighted on the interactive map, or compare it against the rest of the catalog.