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A Carbene.AI Project

In development. Waitlist open.

The exam is a build, not a quiz.

Multiple choice tells an employer you can recognize the right answer. It does not tell them you can build the thing. This credential asks you to ship working defensive tooling, survive having it attacked, and then explain why you built it that way.

How it is graded

Three parts with hard gates between them. The rubric is published in advance. A credential with a secret rubric is a coin flip with extra steps.

Part 1

Build under time pressure

Machine graded. Pass or fail.

72 hours. You get a specification and a fresh lab, and you ship working defensive tooling that meets stated functional requirements. Not find the intrusion in these logs. Build the thing that finds it.

Part 2

Adversarial validation

Machine graded. Pass or fail.

The harness attacks what you built with cases you have not seen, including the failure modes the curriculum teaches. Does it hold? Does the rollback actually roll back? Does the mesh converge when a node lies?

Part 3

Design defense

Human graded against a published rubric.

Only candidates who clear Parts 1 and 2 reach this. A written architectural derivation, then thirty minutes defending your design with your own code on the screen. Why this design. Where does it fail. What did you try that did not work.

Two credentials

Planned pricing for the founding cohort. Names are working titles and not yet final.

Defensive Engineer

$1,299

“I can build a working defensive stack and prove it detects real attacks.”

  • The full build curriculum, lab through capstone
  • 12 months access
  • Exam attempt plus one free retake
  • Public verification profile

Defense Architect

$1,899

“I can derive and build defensive architecture that survives losing the center.”

  • Governance and the endpoint mesh advanced track
  • Atomic reversible response and signed verdict gossip
  • Exam attempt plus one free retake
  • Requires the Defensive Engineer credential

It does not expire

No continuing education requirement. No annual maintenance fee. No renewal paperwork. We are not going to sell you a credential and then bill you every year to keep it.

The credential is versioned instead. A new version means a new build against a new threat model, offered as a new exam at an upgrade price. Your public verification profile shows which version you earned and when, so recency is visible without being punitive.

What it costs you to hold it after you earn it: nothing.

Start free. No account required.

The reference hubs are open to everyone and always will be. Use them to decide whether the way we teach suits you before anything costs money.

ATT&CK HubD3FEND HubPurple MatrixMaGMa Use CasesIR Playbooks

The first cohort will be small on purpose

Modules are being built now. The waitlist sees the curriculum, the hardware spec, and founding cohort pricing before anyone else, and it is how we decide how many seats to open.

Get Notified When the Waitlist OpensAsk a Question