If you have been browsing budget-friendly cloud security certifications, you might have come across CyberWarFare Labs' Multi Cloud Red Team Analyst (MCRTA) and Multi Cloud Blue Team Analyst (MCBTA). At just $7.50 each during a discount, they sound like a great deal. But are they actually worth your time? I recently took both, and here is my honest review.

What Are MCRTA & MCBTA?

Multi Cloud Red Team Analyst (MCRTA)

The MCRTA certification is designed to introduce learners to offensive security across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud (GCP). When you purchase MCRTA, you receive training materials that cover multi-cloud architecture, authentication, and exploitation techniques. The course includes hosted labs on CWL's Cyber Security Platform, giving you a hands-on environment to practice. You also get access to 30 study challenges, split into 10 challenges per cloud provider, which help you prepare for the final exam. The exam itself consists of 30 CTF-style challenges, again divided equally across AWS, Azure, and GCP, where you capture flags by exploiting cloud misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. It covers:

• Multi-cloud architecture & authentication

• Exploiting misconfigured cloud services (EC2, S3, IAM ACLs, Azure Entra ID, GCP storage/VMs)

• Vulnerable cloud-hosted app exploitation

• Practical red team operations for each major cloud platform

In short, it is a guided set of labs where you learn by hacking deliberately vulnerable cloud environments.

Multi Cloud Blue Team Analyst (MCBTA)

The MCBTA certification focuses on defensive cloud security and centralized monitoring. Unlike MCRTA, it does not provide hosted labs. Instead, you are given blueprints and deployment guides to set up your own multi-cloud investigation lab. The training materials cover blue team fundamentals such as log analysis, threat detection, and using the ELK stack for monitoring. Tutorials walk you through deploying centralized logging and monitoring for AWS, Azure, and GCP. The exam consists of 30 CTF-style challenges, with 10 challenges for each cloud provider, where you investigate cloud incidents and capture flags based on your findings. Topics include:

• Multi-cloud security challenges & threat landscape

• Centralized logging & monitoring deployments across AWS, Azure, and GCP

• Incident investigation workflows

• AWS, Azure, and GCP-specific threat detection

• Hands-on case studies for cloud breaches

This one is less about breaking into the cloud and more about detecting, analyzing, and responding to incidents across multiple providers.

Both certifications are:

• Entry-level: Designed for cloud security beginners.

• Hands-on: Entirely practical, no multiple-choice theory exams.

• Accessible online: Labs are hosted on CWL's Cyber Security Platform.

My Experience Taking the Exams

Both certifications follow a fully CTF-based format, where you progress by capturing flags through solving security challenges. Each one took me around two to three hours to complete. In terms of difficulty, I found them easier than the CCSP-AWS, which is a multiple-choice exam. For the MCRTA in particular, the challenges can easily be replaced with freely available cloud CTFs that you can find online.

The training content provided is quite basic but still relevant to the exams, and you are allowed to search for information online while attempting them. However, I did find some of the hints and questions to be misleading or poorly worded, which made certain parts more frustrating than genuinely challenging.

Content Quality and Relevance

The content is up-to-date with current cloud security fundamentals and the training materials are well-structured, with topics that directly align with the tasks in the exam. Unfortunately, some of the exam questions were confusing, not because they were technically difficult, but because of unclear wording in the instructions or hints.

Value for Money

At full price, I believe you could get similar or even better hands-on experience by participating in free cloud security CTFs. The MCRTA in particular is not worth it unless you specifically want a certificate, as equivalent content is readily available at no cost. The MCBTA offers slightly better value since ELK-based cloud logging CTFs are less common.

If you manage to purchase them at a discount, as I did for $7.50 each, they can be worthwhile for entry-level practice and as a small addition to your CV.

Recognition

Both certifications provide a certificate upon completion and as of writing this article, I have not noticed any tangible recognition from recruiters or employers as a result of adding these certifications to my profile.

Pros and Cons

The biggest strengths are the fully hands-on CTF format, the relevance for beginners in cloud security, and the low cost during discounts. They also cover both offensive topics through the MCRTA and defensive topics through the MCBTA, giving a balanced skill set for those starting out.

On the downside, the poor wording of some hints and questions can be frustrating, the certifications have little to no industry recognition, and the regular price is not competitive compared to the many free resources available online.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the MCRTA and MCBTA certifications from CyberWarFare Labs offer an affordable and practical way to gain exposure to multi-cloud security concepts. MCRTA is more beginner-friendly since it comes with hosted labs and ready-to-use challenges, making it easy to jump straight into hands-on learning. MCBTA, on the other hand, demands more initiative, as you need to set up your own lab environment, but this can be a valuable learning experience in itself for those serious about blue teaming.

At their discounted price, both certifications can be a good addition for learners looking to practice cloud security skills in a structured way. However, the limited industry recognition means they work best as supplementary experience rather than a primary qualification. If you approach them as affordable skill-building exercises instead of career-changing credentials, they can be well worth the investment, especially if you enjoy a CTF-based learning style.