Yes. Every tool is configured and run on screen, and you are expected to reproduce each scan, policy, and pipeline gate yourself rather than watch it. Security tooling is largely a matter of interpreting output, which only develops by running the scanners against real code. Keep a terminal and editor open while you work through the course.

DevSecOps is the practice of building security checks into the software delivery pipeline so they run automatically on every change, rather than as a review stage before release. In practice it means scanners, policies, and secrets controls defined as code and enforced by CI/CD. The goal is catching issues when they are cheap to fix.

DevOps automates building, testing, and deploying software. DevSecOps adds security as an automated participant in that same pipeline, covering code, dependencies, containers, infrastructure, and runtime. The tooling and the pipeline are shared; what changes is that security failures block a build the way test failures do.

Shift-left security means moving checks earlier in the lifecycle, toward the developer writing code, instead of concentrating them before release. A vulnerability caught in an IDE or a pull request costs a fraction of the same issue found in production. Course 1 covers the principle and the cost argument behind it.

SAST analyzes source code without running it, so it finds insecure patterns early but reports issues that may not be exploitable. DAST tests a running application from the outside, so it finds real exploitable behavior but only after deployment to a test environment. Both are covered, along with where each belongs in a pipeline.

SonarQube and Semgrep for static analysis, OWASP ZAP for dynamic scanning, OWASP Dependency-Check and Trivy for dependency and container scanning, Gitleaks for secrets detection, Checkov for infrastructure as code, Open Policy Agent for policy enforcement, HashiCorp Vault for secrets management, Falco for runtime detection, and Prometheus with Grafana for monitoring. All are open-source or have free tiers.

Yes. Course 1 covers the OWASP Top 10 categories across two lessons, along with common vulnerability types, open-source risk, and vulnerability identification standards including CVEs. A reading connects OWASP categories and CVE data to dependency risk in real projects.

Policy as code expresses security and compliance rules as machine-readable code that a pipeline evaluates automatically, rather than as documentation people are expected to follow. Course 2 covers Open Policy Agent and Rego fundamentals, and enforces policies as CI/CD gates including a custom Checkov policy.

Course 3 uses AWS for IAM, Secrets Manager, ECR, and Inspector, and an account on the free tier is sufficient for the demonstrations. Courses 1 and 2 run entirely locally with Docker. Where a service incurs cost, the demonstration notes it and shows how to clean up resources afterward.

Scanning checks artifacts before they run; runtime security watches behavior after deployment, where an attacker actually operates. A container that passed every scan can still be exploited through a new vulnerability or a misconfiguration at run time. Course 3 covers runtime threat models and detection with Falco.

A software bill of materials is a machine-readable inventory of every component and dependency in a build. It matters because when a new vulnerability is disclosed, an SBOM answers whether you are affected in minutes rather than days. Course 3 covers generating one and verifying signed artifacts.

AIOps applies machine learning to operational data so that anomalies surface without a human writing a rule for every case. Course 3 covers Prometheus and Grafana dashboards, isolation forest anomaly detection, AI-assisted log analysis, event correlation, and predictive incident management.

This course is completely online, so there’s no need to show up to a classroom in person. You can access your lectures, readings and assignments anytime and anywhere via the web or your mobile device.

Yes! To get started, click the course card that interests you and enroll. You can enroll and complete the course to earn a shareable certificate. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you’re automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. Visit your learner dashboard to track your progress.

Yes. In select learning programs, you can apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can’t afford the enrollment fee. If fin aid or scholarship is available for your learning program selection, you’ll find a link to apply on the description page.