Training course · RAG & LLM Applications · Security & DevSecOps

RAG & LLM Applications for Security and DevSecOps Teams

Develop RAG and LLM applications: embeddings, vector databases, chunking, retrieval, evaluation, cost control and data protection.

Duration
2 days (14 hrs)
Format
Online or on-site
Language
German or English
Participants
open dates or exclusive for your team
Certificate
Certificate of attendance

Overview

This course connects RAG & LLM Applications with the everyday processes of Security & DevSecOps. Participants work on realistic scenarios and leave with prompts, workflows and checklists they can use straight away.

Retrieval-augmented generation connects language models to your own knowledge: manuals, contracts, tickets, wikis or product data are made searchable and handed to the model as context at runtime. The result is assistants that give grounded answers with citations instead of hallucinating. In this two-day course you build a complete RAG pipeline, from document preparation through embeddings and a vector database to answer generation, and you learn which levers actually determine quality.

Day two takes you from prototype to robust application. You compare chunking strategies, combine semantic and lexical search, apply reranking, metadata filters and query rewriting, and measure the effect with systematic evaluations. You also cover prompt caching, cost control, latency optimisation, document-level access control and privacy-compliant operation with an eye on GDPR and the EU AI Act. By the end you know when classic RAG is enough, when a large context window or agentic retrieval is the better option, and how to justify your architecture choices.

AI coding assistants and agents affect application security from two directions. They speed up threat modelling, code review and detection engineering, yet they also produce new code faster than traditional security gates can absorb. Security and DevSecOps teams therefore use AI to triage SAST findings, propose fixes for vulnerabilities, harden CI/CD pipelines and scan infrastructure as code for misconfigurations. What matters is a controlled setup: agents running with least privilege, no secrets in the prompt context, every change traceable through a pull request and human sign-off on security-critical decisions. In this course you learn to use AI as a force multiplier for your security programme while keeping the new risks of generated code, prompt injection and insecure tool integrations firmly under control.

The course is delivered live – either online in a virtual classroom or on-site in our training rooms in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart and Kaiserslautern. We can also run it exclusively for your team.

Who is this course for?

  • Application security engineers and security champions in development teams
  • DevSecOps and platform engineers responsible for CI/CD pipelines
  • Penetration testers and red team members
  • SOC analysts and detection engineers
  • Developers accountable for secure software supply chains

Typical challenges we address

  • A flood of SAST, DAST and SCA findings with a high share of false positives
  • Security review becomes a bottleneck as AI-assisted teams ship far more code
  • Misconfigurations in Terraform, Kubernetes manifests and cloud policies go unnoticed
  • New attack surfaces from LLM integrations, prompt injection and over-privileged agents

What you will be able to do

  • You build a complete RAG pipeline from document preparation to answers with citations.
  • You choose embedding model, chunking strategy and vector database on solid grounds.
  • You improve retrieval quality with hybrid search, reranking and metadata filters.
  • You measure application quality with systematic evaluations and detect regressions.
  • Use AI agents for triage, review and fix generation without giving up control over security-critical changes.
  • Integrate AI-assisted checks into CI/CD pipelines alongside your existing SAST, SCA and IaC scanners.
  • Assess and mitigate the specific risks of AI-generated code, prompt injection and agent tool access.

Course outline

Day 1

Module 1 Foundations of RAG and LLM applications
  • Anatomy of a RAG pipeline: ingestion, indexing, retrieval, generation
  • Understanding embeddings: semantic similarity, dimensions, model selection
  • Weighing RAG against fine-tuning and long context windows
  • Structured outputs, citations and dealing with hallucinations
Module 2 Document preparation and chunking
  • Reliably extracting PDFs, Office documents, HTML and tables
  • Chunking strategies: fixed size, structure-aware, semantic, with overlap
  • Enriching metadata and generating contextual summaries per chunk
  • Incremental updates and deletion of documents in the index
Module 3 Vector databases and retrieval strategies
  • Comparing vector databases and extensions such as pgvector, Qdrant, Weaviate or OpenSearch
  • Hybrid search combining vector and full-text search with BM25
  • Reranking, metadata filtering and query rewriting
  • Agentic retrieval: letting the model decide on search steps and tools
Module 4 Evaluation and quality assurance
  • Building and maintaining test sets from real user questions
  • Retrieval metrics such as recall and precision, and answer metrics such as faithfulness
  • Using and calibrating LLM-as-a-judge sensibly
  • Regression testing when chunking, model or prompt changes

Day 2

Module 5 Operations, cost and data protection
  • Prompt caching, batch processing and model choice to cut costs
  • Optimising latency and streaming responses
  • Document-level permissions, tenant isolation and protection against prompt injection
  • Data protection: data residency, processing agreements, deletion policies, GDPR and the EU AI Act
Module 6 Practice lab: Security & DevSecOps
  • Faster threat modelling
  • SAST finding triage
  • Secure code review
  • Hardening IaC and containers
  • Detection engineering
  • Securing the supply chain
Module 7 Data protection, quality & transfer to daily work
  • Source code, vulnerability data and logs are highly sensitive: you learn which data may be shared with AI services, how to keep secrets out of the context and how AI use aligns with NIS2, the Cyber Resilience Act, the GDPR and the EU AI Act.
  • Ground rules for safe AI use in your team
  • Checking results: facts, sources, tests and the four-eyes principle
  • Personal action plan for the next 30 days
  • Open questions, outlook and resources for further learning

Practical scenarios from your field

Faster threat modelling

Derive STRIDE-based threat analyses from architecture descriptions and data flow diagrams, identify trust boundaries and turn countermeasures into testable requirements ready for the backlog. The model is updated rather than rebuilt when the architecture changes.

SAST finding triage

Match static analysis results against real code context, assess reachability and exploitability, dismiss false positives with a documented rationale and prepare minimal fixes for genuine vulnerabilities as pull requests.

Secure code review

Have pull requests checked specifically for injection flaws, broken authorisation, insecure deserialisation and cryptographic mistakes, with references to OWASP categories and a clear explanation for every finding.

Hardening IaC and containers

Analyse Terraform modules, Helm charts and Dockerfiles for over-privileged roles, exposed ports, missing encryption and unsafe base images, then generate hardened versions backed by policy-as-code rules.

Detection engineering

Draft Sigma rules, YARA signatures and SIEM queries from threat descriptions, validate them against test data and enrich documentation with the relevant MITRE ATT&CK techniques.

Securing the supply chain

Evaluate SBOMs, prioritise vulnerable dependencies, analyse upgrade paths including breaking changes and add pipeline steps for signing, provenance attestation and dependency pinning. Each update pull request explains the risk.

Possible hands-on projects

Finding triage bot

A script that ingests SARIF output from the pipeline, deduplicates findings, enriches them with code context and opens prioritised tickets with a suggested fix.

Secret scanning hook

A pre-commit hook with custom patterns for internal token formats, allowlist management and clear guidance on how to rotate a leaked secret.

Threat model generator

A small web app that turns a system description into a structured threat model with data flows, risks and mitigations, exportable as a document.

Prerequisites

Solid programming skills in Python (or TypeScript as an alternative), basic knowledge of databases and REST APIs, and some experience with LLM APIs. You have hands-on experience in software development or operations and a working knowledge of application security, such as the OWASP Top 10 and CI/CD pipelines.

Technical requirements

A laptop with Python, Git, Docker and a code editor, plus API access to at least one LLM and embedding provider. Credentials for the exercises can be provided if needed.

Data protection & compliance

Source code, vulnerability data and logs are highly sensitive: you learn which data may be shared with AI services, how to keep secrets out of the context and how AI use aligns with NIS2, the Cyber Resilience Act, the GDPR and the EU AI Act.

Suggested dates

All dates are suggestions – your preferred date is always possible.

  • Wed, 25 November 2026 – Thu, 26 November 2026 Online Request
  • Wed, 9 December 2026 – Thu, 10 December 2026 Bremen Request
  • Thu, 14 January 2027 – Fri, 15 January 2027 Online Request
  • Mon, 18 January 2027 – Tue, 19 January 2027 Salzburg Request
  • Tue, 26 January 2027 – Wed, 27 January 2027 Online Request
  • Thu, 11 February 2027 – Fri, 12 February 2027 Kaiserslautern Request

Frequently asked questions

When is RAG better than fine-tuning?

RAG is the right choice when a model needs access to current, extensive or frequently changing knowledge and should cite its sources. Fine-tuning mainly changes style, format or specialised behaviour. In many projects RAG is the faster, cheaper and more controllable route, sometimes complemented by fine-tuning for niche tasks.

Which vector database should we use?

That depends on data volume, existing infrastructure, filtering needs and operating model. If you already run PostgreSQL, pgvector often takes you a long way, while specialised systems shine with large datasets and hybrid search. In the course you compare several options hands-on and derive criteria for your own decision.

How can RAG be run in a GDPR-compliant way?

Key factors are choosing providers with suitable data residency and a data processing agreement, enforcing document-level permissions, having a deletion policy for the index and logs, and minimising personal data. For highly sensitive data, self-hosted models are also an option. We work through these choices using realistic architectures.

Is AI-generated code a security risk?

AI assistants sometimes reproduce insecure patterns, outdated libraries or even non-existent package names. The risk is manageable when generated code passes the same gates as hand-written code: peer review, SAST, dependency scanning and tests. In the course you set up exactly these guardrails while using AI yourself to find and fix vulnerabilities faster.

Should an AI agent be allowed to apply security fixes on its own?

We recommend a tiered model: the agent analyses, proposes fixes and opens pull requests, while humans approve the merge. For low-risk routine work such as dependency updates with passing tests, more automation can make sense. You learn to design permissions, sandboxing and audit trails so every decision remains traceable.

How much does “RAG & LLM Applications for Security and DevSecOps Teams” cost?

The course costs a flat €949 plus VAT per participant – whether online or on-site. This includes 2 training day(s) with a live trainer, course materials, a lab environment and a certificate of attendance.

Can I suggest my own date?

Yes. Our suggested dates are just a guide. In the request form you can always describe your preferred date or period in free text – we check availability and confirm within one working day.

Is the course online or on-site?

Both are possible: live online in a virtual classroom or on-site in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart or Kaiserslautern. We can also run the course exclusively for your team.

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