EC-Council Launches AI Security Certifications to Address Workforce Gap Amid Rising Threats

With AI-driven attacks reported by 87% of organizations and generative AI traffic surging 890% year-over-year, EC-Council has launched four specialized AI certifications alongside an overhauled executive cyber leadership program. This strategic expansion directly addresses alarming workforce readiness gaps revealed in recent IDC and Bain & Company studies, which project $5.5 trillion in global AI risk exposure and a 700,000-person skills shortage in the U.S. alone.

"AI is moving from experimentation to infrastructure, and the workforce has to move with it," said Jay Bavisi, Group President at EC-Council. The new programs tackle critical vulnerabilities exposed by current adoption patterns: 67% of U.S. AI talent concentrates in just 15 cities, women represent only 28% of the AI workforce, and security teams lack standardized frameworks to defend against emerging threats like prompt injection and model poisoning.

The Enterprise AI Credential Suite employs EC-Council's proprietary ADG framework:

1. Adopt: Implementation readiness with built-in safeguards
2. Defend: Protection against AI-specific attacks (prompt injection, data poisoning)
3. Govern: Compliance-driven risk management

Four role-based certifications form the suite's core:

• Artificial Intelligence Essentials (AIE): Foundational AI literacy
• Certified AI Program Manager (CAIPM): Strategy-to-execution leadership
• Certified Offensive AI Security Professional (COASP): Red teaming for AI systems
• Certified Responsible AI Governance & Ethics (CRAGE): NIST/ISO-aligned ethics framework

Concurrently, the updated Certified CISO v4 program prepares security leaders for AI-augmented threat landscapes. The curriculum addresses accountability challenges when AI systems influence business operations and security decisions at machine speed.

These credentials build on EC-Council's existing DoD 8140 recognition and align with U.S. Executive Orders 14179/14277/14278 prioritizing AI workforce development. Security teams can explore the full portfolio at EC-Council's AI Courses library.