portswigger progress

What is Portswigger?
Portswigger is a web security company and they are behind Burp Suite which is one of the most used pentesting tools for web applications and most big companies like microsoft and amazon use to test their applications. Its a bit tricky to get into at first but it is really powerful.

Im currently doing their web academy to learn more about ethical webhacking and get some hands on experience with burp suite. I am currently going through all the learning paths and im almost done. I started on 2025/07/26 and im currently at 36% and I got 99 / 269 labs. I finished almost all learning paths with only one missing which is is race conditions.

My plan is to do all the learning paths and then start working on the requirements for the exam. Which consists of specific 10 apprentice labs, 8 practitioner labs, 5 mystery labs (which are just random labs with no solution and minimal descriptions) and you have to complete one practice exam.

There is one annoying issue, for some labs you do need to get the pro version of Burp Suite, which is around 400€ / year and you also need it for the exam. They do offer a 30 day trial, which I will definitely use and try to get alle the necessary labs and probably do the practice exam two times to make sure I dont fail on the real exam. To take the exam ist costs around 80€ and if you fail you have to buy the voucher again. So I will probably practice alot with mystery labs too.

I can definitely recommend their course, its really practical and they teach all the important vulnerabilites that are also on the OWASP top 10 list.

I will keep you updated, and hopefully finish the exam soon to get the certificate! Afterwards I thought about going into HTB (HackTheBox) and start solving some labs there and maybe go for another certificate. Not sure yet.

I also heard that the Comptia Security+ Certificate is good for beginners to get like an entry level job as web security jobs seem to value certificates a lot.