• Ethical hackers, penetration testers, security analysts, red teamers
• IT or security professionals seeking to deepen offense skills
• Network, system, or application security engineers who want to perform advanced assessments
• Professionals aiming to earn the CPENT credential (and potentially the LPT “Master” level for high scorers)

• Several years of experience in cybersecurity, networking, or penetration testing
• Familiarity with basic penetration testing concepts, tools, and methodologies
• Comfort with operating systems (Windows, Linux), scripting, and command-line interfaces
• Prior completion of courses such as CEH or ECSA is often recommended (though not strictly required)

• Plan, scope, and organize a professional penetration test with proper rules of engagement
• Conduct advanced reconnaissance (OSINT), social engineering, and enumeration techniques
• Perform external and internal network exploitation—Windows, Linux, and perimeter devices
• Execute pivoting, double pivoting, and bypass segmented network defenses
• Penetrate web applications, APIs, cloud environments, IoT/OT systems, and wireless segments
• Develop (or customize) exploits and scripts, perform binary analytics and reverse engineering
• Evade defenses using traffic filters, obfuscation, and tool modification
• Produce high-quality, actionable penetration testing reports and communicate findings to stakeholders
• Handle post-engagement activities such as remediation planning and clean-up
• Successfully complete the CPENT practical exam and, for top performance (≥ 90 %), obtain the LPT (Master) designation

Overview of pen testing types/process, ethics, scope, rules of engagement, planning

Scoping, engagement proposals, creating ROE, estimating effort, legal considerations

Information gathering, domain/WHOIS/DNS tools, passive reconnaissance

Email, phone, physical attack vectors, social engineering reporting

Scanning, enumeration, fingerprinting, exploit verification

Footprinting, scanning internal, Windows & Linux exploitation, privilege escalation

Firewalls, IDS/IPS, routers, switching device assessments

SQLi, XSS, authentication flaws, parameter manipulation, web services, business logic flaws

Wi-Fi attacks, RFID, NFC, wireless security assessments

IoT device exploitation, OT/SCADA protocols (e.g., Modbus), bridging IT/OT

Cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP), container security, misconfigurations

Buffer overflows, fuzzing, exploit dev, shellcode, reverse engineering

Pivot strategies, tunneling, bypassing filters, double pivoting, segmentation evasion

Writing professional pentest reports, risk assessment, remediation, executive summaries