🛑 Stop Calling Them Certs. They're Privilege Slot Machines.
Let's be blunt: Many high-stakes, hands-on cybersecurity certifications have lost their merit. They are no longer a true measure of skill but a measure of affluence.
The Truth About the Exam Cycle:
It's not about being a better hacker; it's about being able to afford the next attempt. We’re paying thousands to play a "gambling slot machine":
Exams cycle through a limited list of labs (some easy, some hard).
Candidates just pay repeatedly, "throwing money at the cert" until they hit the series of easy boxes they can pass.
This turns an industry benchmark into a "Privilege Cert." You're not proving your competence; you're proving you have the capital to keep paying until you win the RNG lottery.
Merit is Not Majority
A lot of people hold these pieces of paper. That doesn't make the cert valid. Historically, a majority believed the Earth was the center of the universe—it just means a lot of people are gullible or following the crowd. Paying out thousands for a piece of paper that can be brute-forced with a credit card is a poor substitute for genuine, verifiable skill.
The Real Skill Test
The focus is so narrow it fails to test fundamental skills. If you can automate the process but choose not to because the test structure rewards rote manual work, you've already exposed the flaw. These certs are not good for training the next generation of builders or AI; they reward test-takers, not innovators.
My Focus? Real Skills.
I'm done with the cert lottery. That's why I'm focused on platforms like Hack The Box (HTB), where actual skill, ingenuity, and coding ability are the only things that matter.
What do you think? Are these high-cost certifications still a reliable standard, or are they a financial gatekeeper?
#Cybersecurity #InfoSec #CyberCertifications #OSCP #HackTheBox #SkillsGap #PrivilegeCerts
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