Security Journey vs. Secure Code Warrior

Finding your team's perfect secure coding training solution can feel like an endless maze. With so many options, how do you know which one will empower your SDLC?

At Security Journey, we understand that struggle. This article breaks down the key features of Security Journey and Secure Code Warrior, helping you make the best decision for your organization.

Who is Security Journey?

Founded in 2016, Security Journey began with a clear mission: to help developers and security teams create more secure software through practical, engaging education.

Since joining forces with HackEDU in 2022, Security Journey has evolved into a smarter, more adaptive enterprise learning platform—putting developers at the center of the experience.

Today, the Security Journey AppSec Education Platform helps teams train faster, focus smarter, and build more secure code through an ecosystem of learning that’s both structured and intelligent.

Security Journey's AppSec Education Platform

The Security Journey AppSec Education Platform is where secure coding education meets intelligence, adaptability, and engagement. Our platform isn’t just a library of lessons—it’s a living, evolving ecosystem designed to grow with your developers and your security program.

A Smarter, More Adaptive Learning Experience

Security Journey gives organizations a complete picture of their AppSec training maturity through Developer Profiles and Knowledge Assessments. These insights allow teams to understand where their developers stand today, identify knowledge gaps, and tailor learning to maximize real-world impact.

Developers are at the center of everything we do. From onboarding to mastery, learners follow a clear progression through hands-on coding lessons, expert-led videos, and interactive assessments that align to real vulnerabilities and frameworks.

Our platform’s multi-modal design ensures every learner—from developers to testers to security professionals—can train in a format that fits their preferred style and experience level. Whether watching a short video, reading a summary, or writing secure code in a live web app, every experience reinforces one goal: building security into the way your teams write, test, and ship software.

Structured to Scale Across Your SDLC

Security Journey provides a multi-year, role-based program with over 800 lessons across 40+ programming languages and frameworks. Each path is strategically structured to meet learners where they are—whether they’re new to secure coding or advancing as Security Champions.

We offer pre-built paths to get your program running fast:

Role-Based Paths – Targeted training for developers, testers, and other SDLC members based on their real responsibilities.
Compliance-Based Paths – Support for frameworks and regulations including OWASP, CWE Top 25, and PCI-DSS 4.0 secure coding requirements.
Topic-Based Paths – Deep dives into specialized areas like AI/LLM security, supply chain, or OWASP Top 10 API.

Administrators can easily customize these paths or combine them with organization-specific content, giving you the flexibility to evolve your training alongside your AppSec strategy.

Built for Measurable Impact

Security Journey makes it simple to measure, prove, and improve. Real-time dashboards and reports visualize progress, highlight knowledge growth, and track risk reduction across individuals and teams. You can filter by any user property to see who’s excelling, who needs support, and where your overall security posture is improving.

Driving Engagement and Culture

Sustained learning takes more than lessons—it takes motivation. That’s why Security Journey includes:

Tournaments and Capture-the-Flag (CTF) challenges to inspire friendly competition.
Leaderboards, certificates, and achievements that recognize progress and mastery.
The Security Champion Passport, empowering teams to grow a lasting security culture through practical, real-world activities.

And behind every customer is a dedicated Customer Success Manager, supported by human and AI-assisted in-product help, plus direct access to our product team to shape future releases.

Security Journey is more than training—it’s a complete, adaptive AppSec education platform that scales knowledge, accelerates skill growth, and strengthens your security posture from the inside out.

Who is Secure Code Warrior?

Secure Code Warrior is a company focused on helping developers improve their secure coding skills through gamified learning and challenge-based activities. Their platform is designed primarily around reinforcing existing knowledge rather than building structured programs that develop new skills over time.

Secure Code Warrior’s mission centers on making secure coding fun and engaging for developers through hands-on challenges, tournaments, and leaderboards. It’s particularly well-suited for teams that already have a strong security foundation and want to test and validate those skills through short, scenario-driven exercises.

Secure Code Warrior's Learning Platform

The Secure Code Warrior Learning Platform uses a gamified, world map-style interface to engage developers in bite-sized coding challenges across more than 55 languages and frameworks. Learners advance by completing missions, solving code-based puzzles, and participating in tournaments that simulate real-world threats.

The platform emphasizes speed and competition, featuring a dark, technical layout and animated videos to complement its challenge-based activities. Administrators can build custom paths and host team tournaments to promote healthy competition and skill reinforcement.

While Secure Code Warrior provides an enjoyable experience for developers seeking to validate their skills, it’s less focused on comprehensive program management, compliance readiness, or adaptive learning intelligence—areas where Security Journey’s AppSec Education Platform excels.

Compare Security Journey vs. Secure Code Warrior

When choosing between Security Journey and Secure Code Warrior, it's crucial to understand their key differences. Let's compare their technical depth, instructional methods, hands-on elements, gamification, analytics, and more.

G2 Comparison Tool: Compare Secure Code Warrior and Security Journey 

Technical Depth of Content

Security Journey - Our platform offers a wide range of progressive lessons that cover basic vocabulary and provide enough depth to challenge Security Champions. Additionally, we cover topic areas other providers don't, such as AI/LLM.

Secure Code Warrior – Secure Code Warrior’s modules are designed to evaluate the users' existing knowledge and put less emphasis on providing instructions.

Personalized Learning

Security Journey – Built around Developer Profiles and Knowledge Assessments that help organizations understand their teams’ strengths and weaknesses. The platform then personalizes learning paths to focus on the highest-impact areas, aligning content to both real-world risk and individual learning needs.

Secure Code Warrior – Learners select challenges or missions manually, with limited adaptive guidance or insight into skill progression.

Videos with Impact

Security Journey – We offer conversational podcast-style videos featuring industry experts.

Secure Code Warrior – Secure Code Warrior offers brief animated videos to complement other training activities.

Hands-On Training

Security Journey – Access to multiple lessons requiring coding in a live web app to apply learned concepts and coding exercises are tied to lessons to reinforce learning.

Secure Code Warrior - Offers a limited library of hands-on coding labs. Most modules only require a selection between code snippets without code writing.

Customizable Role-Specific Learning Paths

Security Journey – Offers customizable pre-built role-based, compliance-based and topic-based Learning Paths.

Secure Code Warrior —Pre-built paths cover Basic learning requirements. However, limited content is available for non-developers to meet the requirements of PCI DSS and other regulations.

Engagement and Culture-Building

Security Journey – Keeps teams motivated with Tournaments, CTF-style competitions, leaderboards, and certificates. The Security Champions Passport adds a layer of real-world engagement—helping organizations formalize and track the growth of their Champions.

Secure Code Warrior - Offers tournaments and leaderboards to encourage participation, but lacks broader program management tools for culture development.

Analytics & Insights

Security Journey - Advanced dashboards and reports allow filtering by any user property, visualizing both progress and risk reduction. Reports show improvement over time, helping program owners prove ROI and effectiveness.

Secure Code Warrior - Interactive reports that measure individual, team, and company performance.

Customer Success and Service

Security Journey - Every customer is supported by a dedicated Customer Success Manager, in-product human or AI-assisted help, and direct collaboration with our product team to ensure continuous improvement.

Secure Code Warrior - Larger customers receive an assigned CSM who will respond to customer requests.

Platform Customization

Security Journey - Customize the platform logo and interface theme and create custom learning paths based on the recommended paths by role.

Secure Code Warrior - Supports platform logo customization

Enterprise-Grade Features

Security Journey - SOC2 compliant to protect data, SSO and SCIM support for easy user management, WCAG support across all lessons (read more about security and accessibility)

Secure Code Warrior - SSO and SCIM support, WCAG support on assessments only.