CRTP: Certified Red Team Professional

What CRTP is and who runs it

Certified Red Team Professional (CRTP) is the entry-level certification tied to Altered Security’s “Attacking and Defending Active Directory” course. It focuses on abusing the features, functionality, and misconfigurations of a Windows Active Directory environment rather than memory-corruption or patchable exploits, so the skills transfer directly to real internal assessments and red-team work. It is one of the most frequently recommended first certifications in this space precisely because it assumes little prior AD or PowerShell knowledge and builds from fundamentals.

Cost and what’s included

Altered Security prices CRTP by lab duration: $249 (USD) for 30 days, $379 for 60 days, and $499 for 90 days. Every option includes lifetime access to the course material and updates, roughly 14+ hours of video with captions, a lab you can reach by browser or VPN, a ready-to-use student VM in the cloud with the tools pre-installed, and one exam attempt. If you fail, a re-attempt costs $99 with a one-month cool-down, and the certificate is valid for three years.

Time: the exam and the report

The exam gives you 24 hours of hands-on time in a fully patched, multi-machine AD environment consisting of five target servers plus a foothold student machine. The stated goal is OS-level command execution on all five targets, achieved by abusing features rather than firing patchable exploits. Afterwards you submit a report containing your solutions along with practical mitigations. The official page does not publish a fixed report-submission deadline, so confirm the current window on the vendor’s exam page when you book.

How hard it is, honestly

CRTP is genuinely beginner-friendly, but friendly does not mean trivial — you need to have actually practiced the techniques and taken good notes. The exam deliberately avoids rabbit holes and unpatched-CVE gimmicks; it rewards methodical enumeration and a real understanding of trusts, delegation, ACLs, and privilege abuse. Most people who put the hours into the lab finish the exam comfortably within 24 hours. The generous time and the cheap $99 retake make it low-stress compared with something like OSCP.

Is it worth it — and for whom

It targets pentesters, blue-teamers, and students who want a solid Active Directory attacking foundation without a punishing price tag or time commitment. Reviewers consistently rate the course material and, especially, the lab environment highly. If you already do AD red teaming daily, CRTP will feel introductory — but as a first stop into red teaming it is one of the best-regarded and most accessible options available.

How to prepare

Do the labs, not just the videos — repetition in the lab is what makes the exam feel straightforward. Take detailed, reusable notes and build a command playbook you can search under time pressure. Concentrate on enumeration with PowerView, Kerberos attacks (Kerberoasting, delegation abuse), ACL abuse, and moving across domain and forest trusts. Prepare a report template in advance so that documenting your solutions and mitigations is fast once you have compromised the targets.

SourcesAltered Security — CRTP / AD LabAltered Security — CRTP details