Guide to information security certifications

For this update to our survey we added only one new vendor-neutral certification, the GIAC Certified Incident Manager, or GCIM. On the other side of the table, numerous items were deleted or removed. 12 full-blown vendor-neutral credentials were dropped for reasons that vary from no information available, to no visible signs of life, to a virus lurking on the program's home Web page. We can't take a security program seriously if its operator lets its website attempt to download viruses to its visitors. We also decided to drop individual Brainbench security exams, because they don't lead to certification in and of themselves, which drops the vendor-neutral count by another 5 items. We also did away with coverage of the GIAC certificate and specialist items to drop another 23 items. Thus, our total dropped item count for vendor-neutral certifications is 39. In addition, 11 vendor-specific credentials were dropped, for reasons that vary from cancellation of the program (Symantec), obsolescence of the platform (Windows Server 2000), lack of information available (Cisco IPS) or lack of substantial security content (NCTE and NCDE).

Almost ready: OCA Linux Certification

Oracle is almost ready to go live with the Oracle Enterprise Linux Certified Administrator (OCA) certification. This certification, a stepping stone to upper-level Linux certifications to come, requires passing two exams:

• 1Z0-402, the Enterprise Linux Fundamentals exam (which went live on March 22).
  1Z0-403, the Enterprise Linux System Administration exam (which closed beta on March 31).

Source: Almost ready: OCA Linux Certification

Buzzword

Buzzword

All About Microsoft Certification

There are more Microsoft certifications than ever, which means that choosing one isn't as easy as it used to be.

If you're considering pursuing a Microsoft certification, you may already have discovered that the number of Microsoft certifications is legion. This has come about because Microsoft has redesigned the structure of its certification program several times as it worked to come up with a sustainable, straight forward structure. However, each certification in the latest crop comes in a wide array of variations, and on top of that, the old certifications never went away, and some of them are in fact still relevant to IT professionals today. All of this makes the menu of choices a little overwhelming.

Another reason for this article is that, as of this writing, Microsoft forces you to install their new Silverlight plug in before you can view certification information, and many of us would rather not do that...

Read the full article here: All About Microsoft Certification

All About Microsoft Certification

There are more Microsoft certifications than ever, which means that choosing one isn't as easy as it used to be.

If you're considering pursuing a Microsoft certification, you may already have discovered that the number of Microsoft certifications is legion. This has come about because Microsoft has redesigned the structure of its certification program several times as it worked to come up with a sustainable, straight forward structure. However, each certification in the latest crop comes in a wide array of variations, and on top of that, the old certifications never went away, and some of them are in fact still relevant to IT professionals today. All of this makes the menu of choices a little overwhelming.

Another reason for this article is that, as of this writing, Microsoft forces you to install their new Silverlight plug in before you can view certification information, and many of us would rather not do that...

Read the full article here: All About Microsoft Certification