The Security+ certification, brainchild of the Computing Technology Industry Association, could become a minimum requirement that would help companies and US government agencies hire knowledgeable network administrators. CompTIA is made up of two dozen trade and US government security experts, including representatives from Microsoft, IBM and the FBI.
"This is going to be an entrance into the security profession, a validation of knowledge," said Kris Madura, Security+ program manager for CompTIA.
Judging from the organisations that helped create the certification, Security+ looks to be on the path to becoming the standard for verifying that a potential employee has a sound understanding of security concepts.
CompTIA also includes members from Sun Microsystems, VeriSign, Novell, the US Secret Service and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, the organisation that sets the hiring standards for nonmilitary government agencies.
Despite the heavy corporate involvement in the Security+ certification, Madura said, CompTIA worked to ensure that the exam doesn't favour one technology over another.
"The concepts are more generalised, but they are not so conceptualised that they aren't relevant," she said. "This exam is targeted toward the foot soldier, the people out there that are doing the job."
According to Bryant Tow, executive vice president of vulnerability-assessment company Olympus Security--another company that aided in creating Security+--the new certification won't overlap with another well-known security rating, the Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification.
"CISSP is targeted at people with more experience," Tow said, adding that the Security+ certification answers a different need. "One of the biggest questions we would get from our customers is 'Where can I get started in security?' This answers that."
Although certification programs such as Security+ would depend on the degree to which a person used and was responsible for a network connection, CompTIA's Madura said that as more attention gets focused on security, training could become mainstream, perhaps even making its way into bedrock school curricula.
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I used it as my main study source for the beta exam, along with researching on the net the few areas it was incomplete in. It's draft quality, but full of great information that helped me do well on the exam. The authors also have a finished version I haven't seen yet for $20, that is minus the draft's typos and plus more technical data, that may be worth the price.