Practical DevSecOps pitches security champion training for EU CRA deadline

Practical DevSecOps is promoting its Certified Security Champion program as companies race toward the EU Cyber Resilience Act’s final compliance deadline in December 2027. The move comes as the law already requires 24-hour vulnerability reporting for actively exploited flaws and raises the stakes for software makers selling into the EU.

Why it matters: - The EU Cyber Resilience Act is forcing manufacturers of software and connected products sold in the European Union to tighten vulnerability response, secure development and documentation practices. - Organizations face penalties of up to €15 million or 2.5% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher, for failing to meet essential CRA requirements. - Practical DevSecOps is positioning security champion training as a way to spread CRA-ready skills inside development teams before the final compliance deadline.

What happened: - Practical DevSecOps highlighted its Certified Security Champion, or CSC, certification on Oct. 6, 2026, in San Francisco. - The company said the program is designed to help engineering teams prepare for the CRA’s remaining obligations, which take effect on Dec. 11, 2027. - The CRA’s vulnerability reporting requirement has applied since Sept. 11, 2026, and requires an early warning within 24 hours of becoming aware of an actively exploited vulnerability.

The details: - The CRA, Regulation (EU) 2024/2847, requires products with digital elements to be designed and delivered with appropriate security. - The regulation requires products to be placed on the market without known exploitable vulnerabilities. - The CRA requires documentation with a software bill of materials, or SBOM. - The CRA requires security updates throughout the product support period. - Practical DevSecOps says the Security Champion model places trained developers inside product teams so they can take part in code review, threat modeling and security escalation. - The company says that approach helps embed secure development practices where code is written. - Practical DevSecOps says about 70% of CSC training is hands-on. - The certification includes more than 40 browser-based guided labs. - Participants work through OWASP Top 10 risks by exploiting and then remediating them in code. - The program ends with a six-hour practical exam. - Learners also get access to expert support during the course. - The curriculum covers threat modeling using STRIDE. - The curriculum covers secure code review against the OWASP Top 10 and CWE Top 25. - The curriculum covers SAST, SCA and secrets scanning in CI/CD pipelines. - The curriculum covers secure Infrastructure as Code configuration. - The curriculum covers security escalation communication practices. - The curriculum aligns with NIST SSDF, OWASP SAMM and ISO/IEC 27001:2022. - The CSC certification does not certify an organization’s CRA compliance. - Enrollment in the CSC program is open to individuals and teams.

Between the lines: - The CRA’s 24-hour reporting clock makes security response a development-team issue, not just a centralized security-team issue. - Practical DevSecOps is betting that hands-on training for developers can reduce the gap between compliance requirements and day-to-day engineering work. - The company’s emphasis on labs and practical exams signals a skills-first pitch rather than a policy-only one. - Mohammed A. Imran, CEO at Practical DevSecOps, said deferred security fixes create a compliance risk under the CRA and that training developers who already write code is one practical way to meet tight reporting timelines.

What’s next: - More organizations selling software and connected products into the EU will need to prove they can detect, escalate and report exploited vulnerabilities fast. - Teams preparing for the Dec. 11, 2027 deadline will likely increase demand for developer-focused security training and internal security champion programs. - Practical DevSecOps is making CSC available now to individuals and teams.

The bottom line: - The CRA turns secure coding and rapid vulnerability handling into a board-level business risk, and Practical DevSecOps is selling security champion training as one way to operationalize that shift.