DUBLIN, California — July 14, 2026 — Safeguard today announced Safeguard Academy, a free, public learning and certification platform rolling out at academy.safeguard.sh. The Academy pairs curated courses on software supply chain security with timed certification exams and publicly verifiable certificates — free for individuals, with no payment tier behind the certification.
Software supply chain security has become a hiring requirement faster than the industry has produced people trained in it. Regulations and customer security reviews now expect working knowledge of SBOMs (Software Bills of Materials), VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange), and evidence-based vulnerability triage — knowledge that has mostly lived in scattered documentation and on-the-job experience. Safeguard Academy packages it into structured courses with video, text, and audio lessons, an AI tutor available in every course, and a certification exam at the end.
The exams go beyond multiple choice. The Academy's exam engine supports auto-graded question sets, subjective written answers graded by AI against a rubric with human review, and AI-conducted interview exams — an adaptive, oral-style examination held in chat. Every certificate issued is publicly verifiable at a shareable academy.safeguard.sh/cert/ link showing live verification status, with one-click LinkedIn sharing, a branded PDF download, and a QR code that resolves to the verification page.
Learning on the Academy is social as well as self-paced. Each course carries its own community where learner questions are answered by AI tutors, human tutors, and fellow students; tutors host live sessions over Google Meet, and Academy-wide meetups stream on YouTube Live with a persistent recording archive. A learner calendar tracks sessions, study tasks, exam cooldowns, and certificate expiry dates, and exports to Google Calendar and iCal.
"Certifications only mean something if the exam is honest and the certificate is checkable," the Safeguard team said. "We built the Academy so both hold: exams are timed and drawn from question pools, AI grading is explainable and human-reviewed, and every certificate is a public URL anyone can verify in one click. And it is free, because the industry needs more people who can do this work."
Safeguard Academy at launch
- Free curated courses built from video, text, and audio lessons, with per-lesson progress tracking.
- Timed certification exams in three modes: auto-graded question sets, subjective answers with AI-plus-human grading, and AI-conducted interview exams.
- Publicly verifiable certificates — shareable
/cert/links with live status, one-click LinkedIn sharing, branded PDF download, and QR verification. - An AI tutor in every course, scoped to the course material.
- Course communities — doubts answered by AI tutors, human tutors, and peers; open discussions; moderated.
- Live sessions and meetups — course-scoped sessions over Google Meet; Academy-wide meetups on YouTube Live, archived for replay.
- A learner calendar with study tasks, exportable to Google Calendar and iCal.
- Social connections and an Academy feed — post earned certificates to LinkedIn, X, or Reddit from the certificate page, and follow Academy activity in a built-in feed.
- Built for daily use — light and dark mode, English and Hindi, mobile-friendly, and keyboard-first with a Cmd/Ctrl+K command bar.
First credential: Safeguard Certified Practitioner
The Academy's first certification, Safeguard Certified Practitioner, validates working knowledge of software supply chain security and the Safeguard platform across three modules: supply-chain security fundamentals, scanning and the findings-triage-VEX workflow, and SBOM, compliance, and the wider ecosystem. The exam is 30 questions drawn from a larger pool, 45 minutes, with a 70% passing score; the credential is valid for two years and verifiable for its lifetime at its public certificate link.
Availability
Safeguard Academy is rolling out at academy.safeguard.sh. Courses and certifications are free for individuals; learners sign in with the same Safeguard account used across the platform, and public course catalog and certificate pages require no account at all.
About Safeguard
Safeguard is the AI-native software supply chain security platform. Safeguard catches Zero Days, autonomously remediates them at 100-layer dependency depth, and ships 500K+ curated zero-CVE components so customers deploy clean. Learn more at safeguard.sh.
Media contact: hi@safeguard.sh