Sans and GIAC Certification Fraud: A Case Study
medium.com
medium.com
But I have no idea what this guy is talking about otherwise. He repeatedly claims "content misalignment" and "exam misrepresentation". The courses I have completed were wholly aligned with real-world application. And as far as the exams...they are open books and open notes. And you get practice exams that provide a pretty nice roadmap of the actual test.
I did one beta on public cloud security a while back , the course labs stood out only-they were well put together and allowed you to technically understand things quickly.
The course content (remember it was a beta) was not as good-not much insights from the authors and basically you can see the content was from material in the public domain.
The courses are worth your while IF someone else is paying for you.
With enough time , you can research the content of the courses get the skills
If I were going to spend that sort of money on a "degree", I'd probably go to an actual university rather than a for-profit certificate mill.