When we open sourced AGHAST earlier this year, we said we wanted it to be widely available and built on by the community. Today we are taking the natural next step: AGHAST is now an OWASP project.

It is officially OWASP AGHAST, an OWASP Incubator project, with a new home, a new package name, and a dedicated project site. Bounce Security continues as a maintaining supporter.

• Project site: aghast.owasp.org
• Code: github.com/owasp-aghast/aghast
• Install: npm install -g @owasp-aghast/aghast

Why OWASP?

AGHAST was always meant to be a community tool, not a Bounce product. The philosophy behind it — that you should be able to ask codebase-specific and company-specific security questions and get well-formed answers — belongs to the whole application security community, not to any single vendor.

OWASP is the natural home for that. Donating AGHAST to OWASP gives it three things we care about:

• Vendor neutrality — a home that does not belong to any one company, so teams can adopt it without adopting us.
• Longevity — a governance structure and community that outlast any single maintainer.
• Reach — the credibility and audience of the world’s largest application security community.

What is changing

Everything important about using AGHAST stays the same — the three check modes, the pluggable architecture, the CI-first design. What changes are the names and locations:

If you already use AGHAST in a CI pipeline, see the migration notes below — it is a one-line change.

Migrating

The old GitHub URLs redirect automatically, so existing links and clones keep working. To move to the new package:

npm uninstall -g @bouncesecurity/aghast
npm install -g @owasp-aghast/aghast

The @bouncesecurity/aghast package has been deprecated with a pointer to the new one, so npm install will tell you where to go if you forget. The CLI, configuration format, and check definitions are unchanged.

Bounce Security’s continuing role

We created AGHAST, and we are not walking away from it. Bounce Security continues as a maintaining supporter of the OWASP project, alongside project leaders Josh Grossman and Avi Douglen.

If you want commercial licensing, professional support, or help implementing OWASP AGHAST in your organization, get in touch — that is still us. And if you want hands-on experience building custom checks, AGHAST features heavily in our Repeatable, Scalable and Valuable Code Security Scanning training course.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who tried AGHAST, gave feedback, and filed issues since the April launch — and to OWASP for welcoming the project in. We are excited to keep building it in the open, now with a community behind it.

Go and ask your codebase the questions only you know to ask: aghast.owasp.org.

Update — 16 June 2026: AGHAST has since been donated to OWASP and is now OWASP AGHAST. See AGHAST is now an OWASP project for the full story. The project now lives at aghast.owasp.org, the code is at owasp-aghast/aghast, and it installs as @owasp-aghast/aghast. The repository link below has been updated to point to its new home.

tl;dr

Today, we are releasing AGHAST, an open source framework that combines static discovery with AI prompts to find code-specific and company-specific security issues.

If you want to try it out, you can find information here in the Github repository.

Here is a brief video introduction:

If you want to understand more about the background, read on!

Introduction

Every security team has asked some version of this question: “Can our scanner check for that?” Usually, the answer is no - or at best, “it’s complicated.” That frustration is exactly where this story begins.

The Gap in Generic Scanning

A couple of years ago, we started thinking about a particular problem in application security. There were loads of generic code scanning tools that would tell you about basic technical vulnerabilities, things like SQLi, XSS, the usual suspects. But what if we wanted to find something that was code-specific or company-specific?

Some of the scanning tools provide a custom rules mechanism, which is often very complicated. It was not until Semgrep came about that a powerful but simple way of writing custom code scanning rules was available.

The Questions Nobody Else Could Answer

The sorts of questions we wanted to answer were:

• Has this custom business verification been implemented correctly?
• Has the company’s custom authorization mechanism been used correctly and consistently?
• Are API endpoints returning too wide a data set?

These are questions that are specific to a codebase or organization, and basically impossible for generic static security scanners to answer. They require context to understand how things should work, not just what is technically vulnerable.

From Research to Real-World Use

Working with Michal Kamensky, we delivered a talk and eventually a training course focused around this area of custom tests. The research initially focused on static testing, and for the training course also included dynamic testing.

The aim was simple: provide a straightforward way to get an answer to a codebase-specific or company-specific question.

We also started using this mechanism with clients to secure their codebases. However, the simplicity was sometimes a drawback. Diagnosing certain problems could be very complex or even impossible for a static rule alone to establish.

Something was missing. Static rules could get us part of the way but were not good enough for every circumstance.

Enter LLMs

Thankfully at this point, LLMs came to the rescue. Suddenly we had LLMs and coding agents that were very good at understanding and interpreting code.

We started by moving from static rules to LLM prompts and quickly discovered that once you reached a certain codebase size, the results became unreliable. Feeding an entire codebase to an LLM and asking “find the problems” is a bit like asking someone to proofread the internet: technically possible, practically useless.

That led to a key realization: why not combine these two techniques?

• Use static rules to narrow down to particular areas of the codebase.
• Use an AI prompt to investigate that specific area in depth.

Think of it as a metal detector on a beach: the static rule tells you where to dig, and the AI carefully examines what you find.

The Orchestration Problem

That approach works conceptually, but it introduces another challenge:

How do you orchestrate this at scale, in a repeatable way, and in a way that integrates with existing processes?

Running a one-off combination of a Semgrep rule plus an LLM prompt is one thing. Doing it consistently across multiple codebases, in CI pipelines, with structured output requires slightly more plumbing.

The Answer: AGHAST

The answer is AGHAST.

This is a framework that has been germinating for about six months.

AGHAST stands for AI-Guided Hybrid Application Static Testing, and it allows us to orchestrate tests based on this custom test philosophy.

Today, we at Bounce Security are open sourcing this tool for you to use and build on as well.

What AGHAST Does

AGHAST helps you run three types of checks:

• Pure AI scanning rules - let the LLM do all the analysis
• A combination of a static mechanism and an AI scanning rule - the sweet spot for most use cases
• Purely static rules - for completeness, when a traditional static rule is all you need

The beauty of the approach is what you don’t need:

• You don’t need to modify the code
• You don’t need to build something into the codebase
• You don’t need to write code in the language of the codebase

All you need is:

• Access to the codebase
• An understanding of the problem you are trying to discover
• The ability to write some simple rules

There are almost certainly other ways of achieving this, but to our mind, this approach is straightforward, deterministic, and very powerful.

Built for the Real World

Aside from the basic function, there are several features designed to make AGHAST easy to use and integrate into your existing workflow.

1. CI Pipeline Integration

From the beginning, AGHAST was designed to work easily within automated CI pipelines, utilizing a simple install process, text based configuration and a single CLI call to run.

We anticipate that most teams will find it most useful in this context in the long run. Set it up once, and it runs with every build.

2. Pluggable Components

The current implementation uses Claude Code and the Claude Agent SDK for AI analysis, and Semgrep Community Edition for static scanning.

However, the design intentionally allows for pluggability across the stack:

• Different LLM and API providers
• Different SAST engines (e.g., OpenGrep or other static discovery mechanisms)
• Language agnostic by design

No vendor lock-in here - use whatever works best for your team.

3. Pluggable Outputs and Actions

Output formats are designed to be pluggable - currently supporting JSON and SARIF, with other formats straightforward to add.

Beyond output formats, the platform could also be extended to support pluggable actions, enabling integration with ticketing systems, notifications, or other downstream workflows.

4. Flexible Configuration Mechanism

AGHAST includes a flexible configuration mechanism.

This allows checks to be specified in multiple ways:

• Per-codebase configuration - tailor checks to individual projects
• Central configuration containing definitions for multiple codebases - manage everything from one place

This makes it easy to define a CI job in one place using a single configuration file, which can then apply across multiple codebases that use the same CI job.

Protection of our work

We want AGHAST to be widely available, whether you are a practitioner using it in your own environment, or a consultant implementing it for clients.

AGHAST is licensed under AGPL to keep it open and ensure improvements flow back to the community. If you are interested in commercial licensing, professional support, or help implementing AGHAST in your organization, get in touch.

Prior and Parallel Work

No tool exists in a vacuum. We want to acknowledge some prior and parallel work in this area that both inspired and validated the direction we took.

Semgrep

Firstly, we want to give a shout out to the team at Semgrep, Inc for building a fantastic tool for simple static scanning. They truly revolutionized this space and we stand on their shoulders as do many others.

Semgrep Community Edition is a key part of AGHAST today, although the system is also extensible and could support OpenGrep or other static discovery mechanisms.

Anthropic Code Security (et al)

A few weeks ago, Anthropic released their code security product to much fanfare (and gnashing of shareholder teeth) followed by similar releases from other LLM providers.

That product appears to focus on giving an LLM a codebase and seeing what vulnerabilities emerge.

AGHAST differs in a key way:

• Those tools are exploratory - “tell me what you find”
• AGHAST is goal-driven - “tell me about this specific thing”

AGHAST looks for specific issues you define and returns a specific, well-formed answer about those issues.

RAPTOR

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠻⠿⣿⣧⠀ Get them bugs.....⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
                                                 

(We had to reproduce their funky ASCII art)

At the start of the year, our friends Gadi Evron, Daniel Cuthbert and others released RAPTOR, which performs agentic code scanning for various scenarios.

It is particularly strong for offensive work and moving from vulnerability discovery to exploitation.

While we initially considered building on Raptor, the design philosophy differs enough that it ultimately made more sense to build separately.

OpenAnt

More recently, Gadi Evron and team released OpenAnt. We saw it about a week before release and thought their approach for focusing the LLM’s attention on particular areas of code at a time was super interesting.

The key difference again is that AGHAST is oriented around specific checks and explicit criteria that determine which parts of the codebase are examined. That said, we liked the OpenAnt approach enough that AGHAST now supports OpenAnt datasets as an input source. This means you can use OpenAnt as a discovery method for targeted checks, feeding pre-extracted code units with call graph context into AGHAST’s AI analysis pipeline.

It was encouraging to see them independently arrive at the same conclusion:

A key differentiator for LLM-based analysis is guiding the model to the specific area of the codebase it should examine rather than trying to load a whole codebase into context.

What Comes Next

We think tools like AGHAST are going to be an important step in taking static code analysis to the next level of usability and accuracy. The combination of deterministic static rules and intelligent AI analysis opens up possibilities that neither approach could achieve alone.

We are looking forward to seeing your feedback - and even more, to seeing what custom checks you build with it!

Your course is confirmed and you’re ready to go? Fantastic! That’s a major milestone worth celebrating. 🎉 Now that you’re past the proposal phase, it’s time to think about the practical preparations that will ensure your course is not just delivered, but delivered smoothly and memorably.

In this post, I’ll walk you through essential pre-course considerations, from visa planning to organizing handouts, so that nothing catches you off guard when it’s go time.

Visa Considerations: More Than Just a Stamp

While not strictly a financial issue, visa planning is a must-do if you’re delivering a course abroad. Skipping this step could derail your training before it begins.

Getting a Visa to Enter the Country

Ask yourself: How easy is it for me to enter the country where I’ll be training?

If you don’t have the privilege of a streamlined entry process (like the US ESTA or the upcoming EU ETIAS), start early. Some visa applications take weeks or even months. Even the time between your course being accepted and the conference date might not be enough, especially if there is a backlog.

Getting a Visa That Lets You Get Paid

Here’s where things get tricky. I’m not a lawyer (technically, I’m an accountant but I’ve never practiced), so this isn’t legal advice. However, be aware: Getting paid to train abroad might require a different visa than just attending a conference.

Check whether you’ll legally be allowed to work (i.e. deliver training) and get paid while in that country. Conferences often won’t have definitive guidance on this either so it’s your responsibility to do the homework.

Note that the US in particular has gotten stricter about this and in some cases people were detained at immigration for attempting to come in to work on the wrong visa.

Supplementary Materials: Going the Extra Mile

Beyond your core curriculum, it’s a great idea to prepare supplementary materials that enhance the learning experience. These can include physical goodies, printed handouts, or digital resources. Let’s break them down.

Goodies and Extras

If you’ve promised participants anything extra (such as stickers, USB drives, branded gear) now’s the time to deliver. But beware: You might not know your final headcount until right before the event.

At Black Hat 2023, my attendee numbers jumped by 50% in just two weeks.

So, plan generously. It’s better to have a few extras than run out and disappoint attendees. For expensive items, consider a cutoff: for example, “Free hardware kit for sign-ups received 3+ weeks in advance.”

Course Materials

For in-person training, I’m a big fan of printed materials. When exercises require referring to multiple documents, printed copies save participants from constantly alt-tabbing between different screens.

I always print and bring these materials myself to ensure quality and timing. The exception? At Black Hat, they print a course workbook for you which is a nice touch!

Pro Tip: Never pack your printed materials in checked luggage. Ask me why one day :)

On one occasion where I wanted to go a little above and beyond, I ordered plastic document folders via Amazon to the venue. Each participant got one to organize their handouts, plus some extras like sticky dividers and branded stickers.

Printed materials are great during the course, but soft copies are critical for long-term reference. I provide PDFs unless I want students to edit the files themselves.

I “drip feed” exercise materials throughout the course, which adds a bit of complexity but keeps students from jumping ahead. For slides, I always ensure the numbering on the handouts matches the numbering on screen. This keeps everyone on track.

Don’t Overthink It: Focus on Delivery

While all this prep helps, don’t lose sight of what truly matters, the content and the experience. Your delivery, your energy, and the interactions you create with participants are what make your course memorable.

Handouts and goodies? They’re just the icing on the cake.

Looking for more?

That’s a wrap for now but I have more ideas in the pipeline. Did you find this helpful? Let me know what you’d like to hear more about or which questions you want answered next.

Let’s make your next training the best one yet. 🚀

So your course got accepted? Congratulations! 🎉 That’s a huge win and shows your proposal resonated with the review board. But now comes the real challenge: getting people to actually attend.

However, on this specific topic, I cannot pretend to be an expert or to have seen major success when doing this. I will try and provide my perspective and ideas but your mileage will certainly vary. There are plenty of other things you might want to try and maybe even consult with other people with more expertise.

Size of the Field, Size of the Audience

Before diving into promotion tactics, it’s worth understanding the competitive landscape.

Three big factors influence how easy or hard it will be to sell your course:

1. How many people usually attend training at the conference?
2. How many other courses are being offered?
3. Can you attract people to attend the conference specifically for your course?

For example:

• OWASP Global AppSec events often run up to 10 courses in parallel, with around 100-200 total attendees at the training and around 800 attendees at the conference.
• Black Hat USA, on the other hand, may feature ~140 courses. I remember seeing a lunch room packed with 1,000+ people during training days.

Whilst the numbers at Black Hat may sound particularly promising, note that distribution isn’t equal. Some courses are held in huge rooms with dozens of students, while others are tucked away with small groups.

This makes it crucial to stand out. I’ve already discussed finding your niche at length in previous posts. In addition to this, I have also tried ensuring the course appears relatively high up in the course list through an “optimised” title and also adding an explanatory video to the course description wherever possible (but more on videos further down).

I can’t say it dramatically boosted my numbers, but who knows what would’ve happened if I had named the course “Zebra Security Essentials”? 🤷‍♂️

Either way, don’t rely solely on being listed on the website. You probably want to do more than that.

What You Actually Get from the Conference

Many conferences do minimal marketing for individual courses.

Most conferences might tweet or post once or twice on LinkedIn or other social media networks. I haven’t trained at TyphoonCon, but it’s one of the only instances I’ve seen a conference do promoted tweets for individual courses.

You can sometimes ask organizers to amplify your own posts — but their support is limited and often hinges on you already having a strong social media presence.

Building Your Social Media Presence

If you have a strong social media presence then you are clearly already good at self-promotion so that will help a lot in this context. You can probably skip this section (although I’d love to hear your tips 😀).

I made an effort to increase my social media activity a little (specifically on Twitter and LinkedIn) in the run up to these courses. I grew my follower count slightly and made an effort to post more frequently and try and engage with other posts. I would usually focus on subject matter related to my course including sometimes mentioning work I was doing on developing the course.

I also made an effort to prepare some short videos as this seemed to be a good way of communicating information in an effective way and be in line with how many people seem to consume information right now. I was also able to outsource the video editing which saved time. I varied between videos specifically about the course and also short videos on related topics.

Some interesting discussions developed from both text and video posts and in general I think that having an active social media presence has professional benefits anyway. It does however require a lot of effort to have an impact.

Other Ways to Build Awareness

If social media isn’t your thing (or isn’t enough), here are some alternative channels I explored:

🎤 Conference Talks

Speaking at conferences, specifically on your training topic or even on other related topics, is a great way to build credibility, expand your presence in the industry, and push your course at the same time.

I couldn’t fund travel to overseas events, but I looked for conferences that cover speaker expenses. My largest target was Black Hat USA 2023 so I pushed particularly hard in late 2022/early 2023.

This resulted in:

• October 2022 - OWASP Global AppSec San Francisco (Training + Talk)
• January 2023 - NDC Security in Oslo + OWASP Oslo Meetup
• February 2023 - OWASP Global AppSec Dublin (Training)
• April 2023 - QCon London (Speaking)
• June 2023 - DevTalks Bucharest (Speaking)

I’d often mention my course at the end of talks or during conversations at these events.

🎙️ Podcasts

Podcasts are another great channel. Less travel but plenty of reach.

I got some great benefits from being a podcast guest including:

• Exposure to new audiences
• Valuable feedback on course content
• Deeper conversations that helped refine the material

Many podcasts welcome guest suggestions — especially if you have an interesting perspective or topic to pitch.

💸 Paid Marketing (Spoiler: Meh)

We tried a small LinkedIn ad campaign. Honestly? No real impact.

Paid ads likely require consistent investment and long-term strategy to pay off. Not ideal for one-off training sessions or a short-term effort.

The Hard Part: Self-Promotion is Draining

In truth, I found this part exhausting.

• I’m not a fan of social media pressure.
• I don’t want to be constantly travelling.
• Conference prep takes a toll on time, not just money.

All this meant I wasn’t as consistent or aggressive in promoting as I could have been.

For me, the bottom line was that every time I asked course attendees how they found out about the course, they almost exclusively said it was from browsing the conference website and not from social media posts or any other channel.

So lately, I’ve toned it down. Just a few social posts and that’s it.

The Stress of GO/NO-GO

As I mentioned in a previous post, there’s often a GO/NO-GO decision looming.

• Will enough seats sell to justify running the course?
• Will it hit both your and the conference’s break-even point?

That decision can be stressful. And a little embarrassing if the course gets pulled after a few people have already signed up.

In 2023 I made this more difficult for myself as I planned a family vacation around Black Hat USA. If the training had been cancelled, I’d have had to pay all my own expenses to get to the conference or skip the conference but still travel to the US for holiday.

Luckily, it worked out. But I stressed about it for months. The feeling of relief and excitement I felt when Black Hat confirmed my course was running was unreal.

A Specialist Discipline

Let’s be realistic, sales and marketing is a specialist skillset. You’ll find countless experts who can speak to it better than I can. Hopefully this section provided some useful context although I accept that it is not super actionable.

My most active period was late 2022 through early 2023. While I can’t say how much the self-promotion effort changed the outcome, the opportunity to train at Black Hat and attend DEFCON made it absolutely worthwhile.

Only you can decide how much time, energy, and budget to invest in promoting your course. What’s right for you might not be right for someone else.

Next Post: Make Your Preparations

If your course is confirmed, amazing! In the next post, I’ll walk through the preparations you’ll want to make to help ensure it’s a success.

You’ve figured out your finances, carved out your niche, and built exercises that pack a punch. Now comes a critical step: getting your course accepted by a conference.

In this post, we’ll dive into how to write a compelling Call for Training (CfT) submission that catches the eye of both review boards and potential attendees.

Plan Ahead: Timing is Everything

CfTs (Calls for Training) often open earlier than the main Call for Papers (CfP). For example, Black Hat and OWASP usually open their CfTs more than six months before the event, and they might only stay open for a month.

Failing to plan here could mean missing your window altogether. This means you are going to want to put CfT dates in your calendar and prepare your materials well in advance.

Know Your Audiences

Crafting a strong CfT submission requires you to speak to two distinct audiences:

1. The Conference Review Board

This group is experienced, discerning, and reviewing dozens (if not hundreds) of submissions. You generally have lots of space to provide them with information about the course and you want to try and differentiate it from the many other submissions they are reviewing.

The key things they care about will be:

• How your course stands out from the rest.
• Its technical depth and relevance.
• Your credibility as a trainer.
• How interactive your course is.

💡 Pro Tip: Include testimonials, past success stories, and why you’re uniquely positioned to teach this subject.

2. Your Potential Attendees

Potential attendees will often only see a small portion of your submission — usually the abstract or summary. You need to ensure that you include the right information to help them make a decision. You may also have character/word limits to comply with here. (However, I invite you to compare the Black Hat abstract word limit to the length of the abstracts on the training pages 🙃)

Potential attendees are going to want to know:

• “Is this course useful to me?”
• “Will it help me solve real problems?”
• “Will I walk away with tangible skills?”

Arguably the third audience is your potential attendee’s manager who they are going to have to justify the course to but I think the considerations are similar to those of the potential attendee. To be absolutely clear, you are writing a sales pitch and you need to be thinking and writing accordingly.

Writing for Both: Key Tips

Here’s my approach to balancing both needs:

• Keep it short, punchy, and scannable.
• Address a relatable pain point. You want to make your reader think, “That’s me! I need help solving that problem!”
• Be clear on what participants will do during the course.
• Make it sound like fun to take part in the course!
• Highlight clear, actionable takeaways.

Align with Conference Guidance

Each conference will have its own specific perspective and content that it is looking for. If you are clearly not aligned with that, your submission may be doomed from the start.

Read the CfT guidelines carefully and align your submission accordingly. If the guidance includes sample abstracts or criteria, read through them and ask yourself how well your submission compares to them.

For First-Time Trainers

New to delivering public training courses? You’ll likely need to prove you can teach effectively. For example, Black Hat requests new trainers to provide ~60 slides of training material plus other information as well so make sure you have that ready in time for the CfT as well.

Any prior experience or videos or whatever else you can provide at this stage will help if you are not a well known trainer. I have also provided ratings and testimonials I have received when training and speaking at other venues.

Mission Essential Task List (METL)

Full credit for this point has to go to Daniel Cuthbert from the Black Hat Training Review board who has made it clear on a number of occasions that this is something he expects to see from submissions. Also to AviD, my boss at Bounce Security who has made this standard procedure within Bounce for training course preparation.

A METL is a detailed course breakdown, how long you’ll spend on each topic and what will be covered.

This shows you’ve done more than brainstormed ideas, you’ve planned and structured the course in a logical way. It should include:

• Topic breakdowns with time estimates
• Timings for hands-on to show the lecture-to-exercise ratio
• How learning outcomes map to course segments

As a some-time CfT reviewer, I can tell you: if your submission lacks this level of clarity, it’s unlikely to make the cut.

Get Feedback Before You Submit

Even seasoned trainers benefit from a second pair of eyes.

Tips:

• Ask a former CfT reviewer if possible.
• At the very least, someone familiar with the material.
• If English isn’t your first language, get a native speaker to review.

At Bounce Security, our internal review process made a huge difference — right down to workshop titles and tagline polish.

It is highly unlikely you will get feedback from the conference or the review board during the CfT process, regardless of how early you submit. It is possible you might be able to get some feedback if the submission gets rejected but that is already a little too late…

Add Goodies (If You Can)

Extras can make your course more appealing:

• Hardware courses might include take-home tool-kits.
• Some courses provide pre-configured VMs or helpful documents.
• One course at Black Hat even included a laptop for every attendee (ambitious, but memorable!).

I don’t think these bonuses necessarily replace a compelling course proposition but they might sweeten the deal..

I include special working documents in my course. We’ve also considered offering follow-up consulting hours though we haven’t gone forward with that for now. I did notice however that this year Sensepost is offering an extended Q&A session after their courses.

The Waiting Game

Once you’ve submitted… now you wait.

Don’t be discouraged by rejections, they happen to all of us.

I have been rejected multiple times, even after I have been accepted at previous events from the same organisation. E.g. I have never been accepted by Black Hat Asia and was accepted by Black Hat EU for a couple of years but then rejected the following year.

Always ask for feedback (if available) and iterate on your submission.

Coming Up: Selling Your Course

If you got accepted, congrats! That’s a huge achievement. 🎉 🎉

But now comes the next big challenge: getting people to sign up.

In the next post, I’ll talk about marketing your course in an attempt to turn your hard work into a full classroom.

Let’s be honest: nobody’s signing up for a training course just to sit and listen to someone talk for 7–8 hours a day.

People come to do the things, to get their hands dirty, apply what they’ve learned, and leave with new skills they can actually use. And that’s your edge.

In this post, I talk about how to make the hands-on elements of your course not just functional, but an integral part of the course.

Splitting the Day: Labs vs. Lectures

The Black Hat Call for Training (CFT) recommends at least 40% of your course be practical. That’s great news as it means you only need to talk for 4–5 hours a day.

But here’s the catch: you now need to figure out how to entertain your attendees the remaining time.

I can tell you that the practical segments are the part attendees remember most and will define their takeaway experience. You therefore need to make these segments sound compelling enough for the review board and the potential attendees.

Traditional, Practical Labs

If you’re teaching a very hands-on skill such as offensive security, reverse engineering, cloud config hardening, practical labs are likely your core.

But just saying “we have labs” isn’t enough, how are these labs going to work.

Initial Considerations

Here’s what you need to think through — trust me, these details matter:

• How do you make tasks challenging yet solvable?
• Are the exercises accessible and achievable by people at a variety of skill levels?
• Will you want to centrally track attendee process and if so, how?
• Is it a competition or self-paced?
• Can you stretch your most advanced students?
• How can you test that your labs still work before each run? Is that manual or automated?
• How will you keep lab content up to date if your subject moves fast?
• How many students can you realistically support and troubleshoot for at once?
• Do you have an automated way to reset your labs to a known good state?

Providing Lab Access

One of the biggest questions: how will students access the labs?

• Do they need to install software?
• Is specific hardware/software required?
• Do they need a virtualization tool?
• Will they need admin access?

If the answer to any of these is yes, expect friction and maybe a few frustrated emails.

Hosted Labs: The Modern Standard

In the old days, trainers would lug laptops and servers into conference venues. Now? Cloud-hosted labs are the norm.

Sensepost set the gold standard for this almost 10 years ago as they discuss in their blogpost here. Nowadays, this should probably just be the standard.

But don’t let the cloud fool you into thinking it’s simpler. It comes with its own set of questions:

• Can your labs scale to support dozens (or hundreds) of users?
• How will you automate provisioning for each user?
• Do students authenticate individually? How will you set this up
• Have you secured your environment from… creative attendees?
  • Yes, someone once deployed ransomware in someone’s training lab environment. Be ready!
• Will students have post-course access? (Bonus points if yes.)

When “Hacking” Isn’t the Goal: Creative Practical Exercises

What if your course isn’t about hacking or coding? Then you’ll need to get creative.

In my case, I built two distinct types of exercises from scratch and they actually became the highlight of the course.

(I go into quite a lot of detail here but I hope it helps other people with their thought process. Feel free to skip if you don’t want the details)

Vulnerability Triage

The first was a vulnerability triage challenge.

Students worked in groups, reviewing fictional findings from tools like SAST, DAST, and SCA. They had a simulated codebase or running app as a reference, but running tools wasn’t the goal or even part of the exercise.

Instead, they had to prioritize the vulnerabilities and more importantly, explain their reasoning.

Why? Because the course and therefore the exercises focused on process and decision-making, not tool mastery.

This exercise built on the lectures and gave students a chance to the new ideas in a low-stakes setting.

Organisational Process

The second type of exercise asked: How do you roll out a security tool across an organisation?

Students had to plan an implementation using a working document based on the content in the lectures. Sounds fun, right? Well I had to work a little on the fun part.

Since attendees came from diverse backgrounds I created a fictional company case study for everyone to work from. I also prepared a tech stack, fake team leads, and a slightly sinister app to keep things fun. All teams worked from the same case study as I felt it would make it easier for teams to compare notes afterwards.

But how would they provide their feedback?

Enter: The Simulated Stakeholder

Rather than each team presenting their plan to the entire class (which might be a little repetitive), I introduced the simulated stakeholder, in most cases the CTO of the simulated company.

(I think this was probably inspired by exercises we did back when I worked at Deloitte as part of training for more senior roles.)

Each team nominated one person to role-play the CTO. All the “CTOs” joined me in a breakout session, where I worked through the working document with them and guided them on the kinds of questions and expectations a real executive might have and how best to interact with the teams.

Then, each CTO joined a different team, and that team had to justify their plan to a skeptical senior stakeholder.

Aside from the simulated stakeholders getting much amusement from their sudden promotion to CTO (although I think on one occasion a stakeholder was actually a CTO in their day job), this was a great way to give the teams something to work towards and also stimulate discussion.

It was also an important illustration of one of the key lessons from the course which is the importance of getting senior level buy-in.

Other Ideas

I’ll save the story about the time I built a multi-player game based on the ASVS entirely in Google Sheets for another post, or over a beer. 🍻

Just know that even if it sounds weird, it might actually work.

The Real Point

Yes, I wanted to show off some my cool ideas but the real message is this: You can go beyond traditional “labs” and build creative, impactful exercises that magnify the impact of your course.

Don’t limit yourself to hacking and code. Remember that the rarest and most valuable skill in security is the ability to communicate and persuade. Think about courses which build that muscle as well.

Next Post: Putting pen to paper

So now, having figured out your financials, your niche, and your exercises, you now need to actually get accepted by a conference.

In the next post, I’ll walk through how to write a compelling Call for Training (CFT) submission.

If you’re thinking about creating a training course, one of the biggest questions you’ll face early on is: Will anyone actually want this? In this post, we’ll explore how you can evaluate whether your course idea stands a chance in an already packed marketplace for professional training.

Market Research

In a previous post, I mentioned that I already had a good grasp of the application security training landscape, which gave me an edge in knowing which topics were oversaturated. If you’re not yet as familiar with your own niche, I would suggest you do some market research. Here are some areas you might want to consider.

History of training courses at your target conferences

Conferences will often maintain historical websites where you can see the courses they have previously offered.

Black Hat maintains an archive of past training courses with predictable URL patterns, making it easy to explore previous years’ offerings. Keep in mind that not all Black Hat events are created equal, Black Hat USA is significantly larger than its counterparts in Asia and Europe.

As for satellite events like Black Hat Spring Trainings, I have never seen a formal Call for Training. It’s possible these are invite-only affairs, favoring trainers with a strong sales history, but that’s just a theory.

If you’re targeting an OWASP event, they also have a historical record of courses available though it might require a bit of sleuthing. (Hint: all recent OWASP websites have been based in GitHub).

For smaller or more specialized conferences, you’ll need to do your own detective work to uncover historical data.

Check out Offensive Security

Offensive Security offers a well-known set of training programs. You can probably guess where their focus lies. If your topic overlaps with theirs, take a hard look at how your course differentiates itself. Their content is well-established and widely respected so if you’re in their arena, you need a unique angle.

Review the SANS catalogue

SANS offers a massive range of courses often at premium prices but keep in mind that many of them run for six full days. That means a shorter, more affordable course on a similar subject might still appeal to time and budget conscious learners.

Explore other sources

Don’t stop there. Depending on your topic, there may be other educational offerings in your space: self-paced labs, YouTube tutorials, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and more.

Ask yourself: What will learners gain from your course that they can’t easily get from free or low-cost resources? Your value proposition needs to go beyond content, it should include engagement, interaction, depth, or application.

Finding the niche

The sweet spot for your course lies at the intersection of three things:

1. A subject you’re passionate and knowledgeable about
2. A real gap in the current training market
3. A compelling reason for someone to pay for it

If you’re struggling to identify that gap, don’t be discouraged. It is a tricky balancing act. The ideal topic needs to be fresh and interesting to the conference review board and relevant enough that your potential attendees can justify the time and money it takes to attend.

On the other hand, the cybersecurity field in particular is constantly evolving. New technologies and threats emerge regularly each one a chance for you to carve out your own area of expertise. There are plenty of unsolved problems and overlooked areas that need attention.

Remember, your audience will often have to convince their manager that your course is worth the investment. Help them make the case by choosing a topic that solves real problems, enhances valuable skills, or supports strategic goals.

Next Post: Practical Exercises

In the next post, we’ll focus on the major differentiator that can elevate your course above the rest: hands-on activities. Because let’s face it no one wants to sit through two days of lectures. What participants get to do during your course is just as important as what they learn.

Introduction

In my previous post, I briefly touched on the financial realities of delivering training courses. In this post, I’ll explore this topic in greater depth.

Making your millions??

If your goal is a big financial success, training courses will probably not be your golden ticket. That is why I want to tackle this topic up front. You will need to think about this but you also need to be realistic.

Developing a course requires significant upfront investment, and even after launch, it demands ongoing “care and feeding”. Keeping content fresh and relevant is crucial, and that means regularly:

• Updating material to reflect industry changes
• Incorporating new insights and experiences
• Ensuring training exercises still function as intended
• Revising and updating technical components of exercises
• Adapting exercises to maintain relevance
• Applying feedback from previous course sessions

If you can identify a subject that is broad enough to appeal to a large audience, different enough from existing options to generate demand, and also low-maintenance in terms of updates, then you might have a high-profit opportunity.

But let me know if you do manage that as it is pretty tough…

In my case, the course I built falls into a slightly specialized category. While maintenance isn’t overwhelming, I have only delivered it 5–8 times so far.

Non-financial benefits

On the other hand, there are other benefits that may be attractive to you.

The experience of preparing and delivering a course at this level may itself be valuable to your professional development. It may also bring a boost to your public profile and your resume.

Depending on your planned career trajectory, these aspects may be more valuable than money. However, your current employer may not see things this way. 🙃

Recouping your investment

Before you make a profit you are going to need to cover your initial investment.

The most basic investment is any actual money you spend to deliver the course in person. There are a bunch of considerations for this so I will cover it in more detail a little further down.

The real cost however is (or at least should be) the time you spend building the course. You certainly don’t want to spend a lot of time building a course which no one wants to attend.

To try and mitigate this risk for my course, I took a phased approach. I started by delivering a one-hour overview at the Open Security Summit, followed by a one-day version at OWASP Global AppSec.

These smaller commitments helped me gauge audience reception and refine my content. The one-day course also allowed me to test my experimental exercises (more on that later). While this phase didn’t compensate for all the time investment, it provided some validation that the course was worthwhile and effective and therefore I should continue investing in it.

Striking the right balance is key: invest enough to prove the concept and demonstrate viability, but avoid committing excessive resources to an untested idea that might not work out.

Breaking even on an single course session

If you are able to afford to pay expenses to deliver training “for the exposure”, then you don’t need to worry about this. In most cases however, you will need to have a plan.

Virtual training is simpler financially: as long as you cover your time cost, you’re in the clear. In-person training, however, introduces a host of additional expenses and complications and I will try and cover some of these here.

For in-person training, you need to figure out what your break even point is. Specifically, how many people need to register to get the revenue required to break even. Obviously the first thing you need to know is what share of the course income you will receive from the venue which is hosting the training. This might be fixed or flexible depending on the conference.

You can then start building a break even and profit calculator based on your expected expenses. I usually prepare an Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc to work this out and recalculate dynamically.

Key Expenses to Consider

Different conferences handle costs in different ways. Expenses that conferences might cover for you (wholly or partly) include:

• Flight costs
• Hotel costs
• Venue costs including food and beverage.

Examples that I have seen:

• Black Hat publishes information on the public CFT page.
• OWASP covers all venue costs but not hotel and flight.
• Other conferences equally split costs and then equally split the profit as well.

All conferences I have seen also give trainers a free conference ticket which could also be worth a lot.

Beyond travel and accommodation, factor in additional costs such as:

• Airport transfers
• Meals and per diems
• Printed materials or giveaways for participants, (I have a bunch of print-outs I prepare and hand-out over the duration of the course and I often buy and bring snacks as well)

The Hidden Cost: Your Time

If you’re self-employed or consulting, or you are doing this separate to your employer, your time has an opportunity cost. Time spent training is time you could have spent on client work or other revenue-generating activities. Don’t forget to include travel days as well.

Revenue Per Course Day

Different conferences handle pricing and revenue shares in various ways:

• OWASP charges attendees a flat daily rate for training, meaning a three-day course costs three times as much as a one-day course, with no discounts. Trainers receive 40% of net revenue up to $10,000 USD, and 50% of net revenues above $10,000 USD (this is public information).
• As can be seen on the public training page, Black Hat training ticket costs vary between courses and there are also various early-bird stages. Interestingly, a four-day Black Hat course doesn’t necessarily cost attendees twice as much as a two-day course.
• Some conferences pay a fixed rate per course, contingent on meeting a minimum number of registrants.

Note that at Black Hat USA, trainers can deliver the same two-day course twice (Sat-Sun and Mon-Tues).

Set Your minimum up-front

Most conferences will ask what your financial minimum is upfront and you should be able to use the information above, plus the conference’s specific terms, to figure that out. You’ll need to maintain close communication with them to determine when to make a GO/NO-GO decision.

The conference’s minimum

Conferences themselves will generally have financial break-even points, and they won’t run training that doesn’t meet minimum registration numbers. Be clear on these thresholds and when there conference team will make their final decision.

Also, keep in mind that waiting on a conference decision could mean higher flight costs if you delay booking.

Next Post: Figuring out your selling point

The financial aspects are only a small part of the equation. To truly succeed, you need a compelling reason for people to choose your course over others in a crowded market. In the next post, I’ll discuss how to carve out your unique value proposition and attract the right audience.

Introduction

In this post, I’ll share some personal background about how I started delivering public training courses and why I pursued this path. My aim is to provide context for the later chapters and help you reflect on the motivation required for such an undertaking.

Admittedly, this chapter focuses more on my experiences than actionable advice, so if you’re confident in your motivation, feel free to jump to the bottom line: what to expect from this journey.

Some Background

At my previous employer, I had always looked admiringly at the posters on the wall of the office from when my previous boss (AppSec legend, Erez Metula) had delivered some of the early mobile security training courses at Black Hat USA. (I have my own poster up on the wall as an homage to that, as you can see in some of my videos).

While the company had moved away from training by the time I joined, the prestige of Black Hat training always stood out to me as a mark of excellence.

Separately, I had the opportunity to review training course submissions for Global AppSec Tel Aviv 2019, as well as for local conferences.

These experiences, combined with my background in developing and delivering training, gave me a solid understanding of the application security training landscape.

Starting at Bounce Security

However, I’m not sure that my new boss (AppSec legend, AviD) had any of that in mind when he asked me, shortly after I had started working with him, if I was interested in developing any training courses. Avi is well known for his threat modeling training which he has been delivering for many years now and working with him, it was a natural thing for him to ask.

Little did we know the journey this simple question would take us on…

Scratching an Itch

As I considered Avi’s question, I reflected on a common challenge I had observed at several client organizations. Many had adopted tools like SAST, DAST, and SCA, only to become overwhelmed by excessive findings, technical hurdles, and conflicts over who was responsible for addressing issues. Instead of improving security, these tools often created frustration, reduced morale, and, paradoxically, worsened overall security outcomes.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a gap in a crowded market for AppSec training courses. Most courses focused on the technical aspects of tools—installation, configuration, and automation. Having seen these tools in real-life, it seemed like no one wanted to talk about the people and process aspects of using these tools. (Hindsight has shown how much of a problem this is in AppSec in general, not just related to tools which provided the inspiration for the next evolution of this course.)

My Motivation

With Avi’s encouragement, I began drafting an outline for a 2-day course to address this gap. I poured my experiences and observations into a detailed structure, focusing on practical, actionable content.

And this is a critical point. I don’t love designing training courses, I don’t love writing slides. Maybe some people do, I don’t know…

However, I felt strongly enough about this and was passionate enough to push through and pull all of this together. And then stick with it when things got harder later on. I was determined that this was valuable content and that I wanted to do the work to get this released.

Your Motivation

The key takeaway here is that creating, marketing, and delivering a training course is a demanding and time-intensive journey. If you’re new to teaching or presenting, it may push you out of your comfort zone, requiring you to build skills like public speaking and effective communication.

Before starting, ensure you are genuinely passionate about the subject. Passion will sustain you through the challenges and keep you motivated to deliver valuable content.

Next Post: The Financial Aspect

For me, the motivation to create this course wasn’t financial. Much of the work occurred during downtime between projects, and while course revenue has offset some of the investment, it hasn’t fully covered the effort. However, the experiences and opportunities it created have been invaluable.

In the next post, I’ll discuss the financial realities of creating and delivering training courses in detail.

Introduction

Welcome to a new blog series exploring the process of preparing, submitting, and delivering training courses at conferences such as Black Hat, OWASP Global AppSec conferences, and NDC Security. In this introductory post, I will provide an overview of what this series entails and share the inspiration behind it.

Background

The idea for this series has been on my mind for some time, but it was only during a recent flight that I felt ready to begin writing. Over the past few years, I have embarked on an unexpected journey that has been both rewarding and challenging. This experience has equipped me with valuable insights and lessons that I am eager to share.

This series aims to inspire and guide individuals considering a similar endeavor, offering practical advice and serving as a planning resource. Whether you are contemplating delivering a course or simply curious about the process, I hope these posts provide clarity and motivation.

Chapters in the Series

The blog series is structured into chapters that follow the chronological steps of my journey. While the posts are designed to be read sequentially, I recommend reading the entire series to gain a comprehensive understanding before deciding if this path aligns with your goals.

The planned chapters include:

• Introduction (this post)
• What Was My Motivation? What Motivation Do You Need?
• How Do the Financials Work for a Training Course?
• What Is the Niche/Selling Point for Your Course?
• Planning the Practical Side: How Will You Make It Engaging?
• How Should You Write Your Submission to Maximize Acceptance Chances?
• How Can You Effectively Market Your Course?
• What Preparations Should You Make Before Traveling?
  

A complete list of published posts can be found at the top of this page.

I welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions for additional topics to cover. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn. As this series evolves, following me will ensure you are notified when new posts are published.

Next Post: My Motivation

In the next post, I will go into my personal motivations for delivering public training courses and share the factors that guided me along this path. I hope it provides insight and encouragement as you consider your own journey.