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Best AI security courses for 2027: 9 compared, with prices
Nine AI security courses checked in November 2026: SANS, OffSec, QA, Udacity, Hack The Box, Practical DevSecOps, InfosecTrain, The Sec Guy and PortSwigger. Price, length, format and who each one fits.
Short answer
For 2027 the strongest AI security courses are SANS SEC545 (5 days, about $8,260, leads to GIAC GAIPS), OffSec AI-300 (red teaming, $1,749 with the exam), QA's 3-day Certified AI Security Engineer (from £4,170), Udacity's 71-hour AI Security Engineer Nanodegree and Hack The Box's AI Red Teamer path built with Google. Cheaper options are Practical DevSecOps CAISP, InfosecTrain's 40-hour program, our own practical AI Security Engineer course and PortSwigger's free labs. Start from the job you want and work back to the course.
Looking for an AI security course for 2027? There isn’t one best course. Some are built for red teamers. Some are for engineers who build and defend AI systems. A few exist mainly to get you a certificate your employer recognizes. Prices run from free to over $8,000.
We opened every course page below on 14 November 2026 and wrote down what it said. Prices move, so click through before you pay. One of the nine is ours. It’s marked, and further down we say when you shouldn’t buy it.
The comparison
| Course | Provider | Price we saw | Length and format | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEC545: GenAI and LLM Application Security | SANS Institute | $8,260 self-paced; live sessions about $7,715 to $10,720 | 5 days live or 30 hours self-paced, 20 labs and a capture-the-flag | Engineers whose employer pays, and anyone who wants GIAC GAIPS |
| AI-300: Advanced AI Red Teaming | OffSec | $1,749 for 90 days with one exam attempt; $2,749 list for a year | About 65 hours, self-paced, then a 24-hour practical exam | Experienced penetration testers |
| Certified AI Security Engineer | QA with Scademy | From £4,170 plus VAT | 3 days, live online, exam voucher included | UK teams that want a short instructor-led class and an exam |
| AI Security Engineer Nanodegree | Udacity | Subscription or one-time; amounts not shown on the page | 71 hours, 4 courses, 4 reviewed projects | People who know Python and machine learning basics |
| AI Red Teamer job role path | Hack The Box with Google | 900 of HTB Academy’s credits listed | 12 modules, 230 sections, rated Hard | Offensive security people who learn by breaking things |
| Certified AI Security Professional (CAISP) | Practical DevSecOps | $1,099 list ($934.15 in a sale when we looked) | Self-paced, 60 days of browser labs, 6-hour practical exam | DevSecOps engineers who want a hands-on exam |
| Practical AI Security Engineering Program | InfosecTrain | Not shown on the page | 40 hours in scheduled online batches | People who want fixed class times and open-source tooling |
| AI Security Engineer | The Sec Guy (ours) | One payment, under $300; shown in your currency on the page | 33 modules, self-paced, practical: every topic has a lab on your laptop, then on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud | People moving into AI security from another role, on their own budget, who want practice and not theory |
| Web LLM attacks | PortSwigger Web Security Academy | Free | Short topic with browser labs | Anyone who wants a first taste before paying for anything |
Price we saw, in US dollars
The expensive ones, and what you get for the money
SANS SEC545: GenAI and LLM Application Security
SANS is the premium pick, and it’s priced like one. The self-paced version is $8,260 with four months of access. Live sessions were listed between about $7,715 and $10,720, depending on the city and currency. You get 5 days of teaching (or 30 hours on demand), 20 hands-on labs and a capture-the-flag on the last day.
The syllabus starts at prompt injection and RAG, moves through agents and MCP, and ends with MLSecOps on AWS. It also lines up with the GIAC AI Platform Security (GAIPS) exam. SANS expects you to know the Linux command line, Git and CI/CD, containers with a little Kubernetes, and AWS basics.
If your employer pays, or you need GIAC on your CV, this is the one. Paying yourself while you’re still working out what RAG means? Start somewhere cheaper.
OffSec AI-300: Advanced AI Red Teaming
This one ends in the OffSec AI Red Teamer (OSAI) certification. The bundle costs $1,749 for 90 days of access and one exam attempt. A year of access with two attempts lists at $2,749. Expect about 65 hours of course material and then a 24-hour proctored exam where you attack an enterprise-style AI environment and write it up.
OffSec recommends OSCP or similar experience first. They say basic AI knowledge helps but you can start without it.
It suits people who already do offensive security. If your job is building or defending AI systems, most of it will be the wrong side of the fence for you.
QA Certified AI Security Engineer
A 3-day live online class, run with Scademy, from £4,170 plus VAT. The exercises cover prompt injection, jailbreaks, prompt extraction, model theft and training data manipulation. The price includes a voucher for the independent APMG exam, which is 60 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes with a 50% pass mark.
Companies that already book training through QA will find this easy to approve. Three days is short, though. You’ll leave with a solid introduction and an exam pass, and you’ll still need practice afterwards.
Udacity AI Security Engineer Nanodegree
71 hours split over four courses: threat modeling and operational defense, red teaming and adversarial machine learning, LLM and agentic AI security, then governance, risk and compliance. Each course ends with a project that a reviewer checks. Udacity sells it by subscription or as a single purchase. The page didn’t show the amounts.
Read the prerequisites before you sign up. Udacity lists Python, cloud fundamentals, basic security, RAG, supervised machine learning and neural network basics.
That makes it a good fit for someone coming from data science or machine learning. Coming from security or operations with no model training behind you, you’d spend the first weeks catching up.
Hack The Box AI Red Teamer, built with Google
12 modules, 230 sections, rated Hard, and aligned with Google’s Secure AI Framework. The topics are prompt injection, model privacy attacks, adversarial AI, supply chain risks and deployment threats. Hack The Box prices it in its own Academy credits (900 were listed), so what you actually pay depends on your subscription.
If you like how Hack The Box teaches, you’ll like this, and it goes deep on attacks. Cloud guardrails, detection and governance aren’t its subject, so look elsewhere for those.
The mid-priced and cheap ones
Practical DevSecOps CAISP
Self-paced, with 60 days of labs that run in the browser, so there are no virtual machines to set up. The list price is $1,099. It was $934.15 in a sale on the day we looked. The exam is practical: five challenges in six hours, then 24 hours to hand in a report. The provider says roughly 70% of the course is lab work and that the certification doesn’t expire.
Worth a look if you want a hands-on exam without OffSec’s difficulty or SANS’s bill.
InfosecTrain Practical AI Security Engineering Program
40 hours, taught in scheduled weekday or weekend batches, with recordings of each session. The labs run on open-source tools. The page names garak, PyRIT, Promptfoo, Presidio and Trivy among others, and says you need no enterprise licenses. It also says, in so many words, that this isn’t a beginner course. We couldn’t find a price on the page.
Some people only finish a course when there’s a class to turn up to. This is for them.
PortSwigger Web LLM attacks
PortSwigger’s Web Security Academy has a topic on attacking apps that use LLMs. It covers prompt injection, indirect prompt injection, excessive agency and insecure output handling, and the labs run in your browser. It costs nothing.
Do this first, whoever you are. An afternoon here tells you whether you enjoy the work, and that’s worth knowing before you spend $8,000.
Where our course fits (and where it doesn’t)
We sell AI Security Engineer. Here is how it compares with the eight above.
It’s practical AI security, not a theory course. You don’t watch slides about prompt injection. You run the attack, build the fix, and check that the fix holds. Every lab runs free on your own laptop first, then on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. All three clouds are included.
It starts from zero. We don’t assume you’ve trained a model. People come to it from cloud, platform, security, SOC and development jobs, and some straight from college.
It covers attack and defense both, plus detection and governance, because that’s what the job looks like once you’re hired.
It’s one payment, lower than every price listed in the table. The amount in your currency is on the course page.
Now the limits. It isn’t an industry certification and it isn’t accredited. You get a certificate of completion from The Sec Guy after a graded capstone. If you need GIAC, OffSec or APMG on your CV, take one of those. A senior penetration tester who wants a hard practical exam should go to OffSec. And if your employer will pay for SANS, let them.
You can try ours before paying. Create a free account and open the free lessons.
How to choose in two minutes
Ask four questions.
- Who’s paying? With an employer’s budget, SANS SEC545 and the QA class are the usual picks. On your own money, look further down the table.
- Attack or defend? For red teaming, OffSec AI-300 or Hack The Box. To build and defend, SANS, Udacity, InfosecTrain or ours.
- Do you need a named certificate? GAIPS comes with SANS, OSAI with OffSec, the APMG exam with QA and CAISP with Practical DevSecOps. We compare the exams on their own in AI security certifications in 2026.
- Where are you starting? New to AI: PortSwigger’s free labs, then ours. Strong in machine learning: Udacity. Strong in offensive security: OffSec.
Still unsure what to learn first? How to become an AI security engineer gives the order. For the subject itself in one page, read LLM security: the risks, the fixes and where to start.
Sources
All checked on 14 November 2026.
- SANS Institute, SEC545: GenAI and LLM Application Security: price, length, labs, prerequisites, GAIPS.
- OffSec, AI-300: Advanced AI Red Teaming: pricing, hours, exam format, prerequisites.
- QA, Certified AI Security Engineer: price, length, exam.
- Udacity, AI Security Engineer Nanodegree: hours, courses, projects, prerequisites.
- Hack The Box Academy, AI Red Teamer job role path: modules, sections, difficulty, credits.
- Practical DevSecOps, Certified AI Security Professional: price, lab access, exam.
- InfosecTrain, Practical AI Security Engineering Program: hours, batches, tools, prerequisites.
- PortSwigger, Web LLM attacks: topics covered.