Increasingly
in the RFPs that I’ve read, the federal government and this cuts across
Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, Civilian Agency,
are specifically calling out certifications. The education requirements
are fairly consistent. You have to have a Bachelor's degree to get in the door
to most positions that you might want to have. However, the certifications
are very specific. It’s a codified way for the customer to understand
exactly where your experience lies, the level of experience that you have to have
in order to attain these certifications. And it also, it points
points to a certain character continued desire to learn
and keep getting certified, keep expanding your professional horizons.
All of this is a positive from the customer’s viewpoint
and they’re increasingly calling out very specific clearances. If you look within the DOD,
you have the DOD 8570, very specifically
calls out certifications for a variety of levels
of position. And it’s easy to find. You can google it
is a very good primer to just get an idea
of the steps that one might want to take in getting certified.
Specifically, if you are getting into perhaps, the systems administration realm,
then you’re going to start with the basics. You are going to have the Microsoft certified professional,
you are going through the plusses, the A+, network+, security+
and then perhaps specialize, get into the MCSA,
the MCSE. If you’re a network engineer,
CISCO certifications are still the gold standard.
But you might want to jump around a little bit. The CCNA is a good starting point.
But rather than go directly to the CCNP, what we see is an awful lot of the networks and the government
are becoming mixed networks. Juniper has gotten a great deal of more market share,
so you might go from the CCNA to getting a Juniper certification.
You can always go back and get the CCNP.
If you’re looking in the Information Security, Cyber Security realm, it’s fairly easy.
CISSP is the gold standard. But that does require certain levels of experience
and it is a fairly arduous certification to get.
In the shorter run, what is – I suppose because of the new emphasis on an offensive cyber security,
you can go through the Certified Ethical Hacker profile.
It’s – only requires two years of experience and you could do it though self-studies
so it’s maybe a little more cost effective.
The CCIE, there is no such thing as an unemployed CCIE.
If you have that particular certification, your career is set for life.
It is possibly the most difficult certification to get
but once you have it, life is easy for you
Getting into some of the things that are of interest now,
I think obviously, virtualization, cloud computing
and typically, particularly in the federal arena, there’s going to be a lag time.
The certifications are going to have to catch up with whatever is trending technically.
So, cloud and virtualization certifications are not as numerous
as they may be in other realms but there are a couple.
** offers a Cloud Essential Certification which is a nice jumping off point
And then the Cloud Security Alliance
has two. It’s the Cloud Computing Technical Professional
and the Cloud Computing Security Knowledge which is a certificate
Both of these are very interesting.
encompass breadth cloud computing
And if you’re forward thinking, even if they’re not necessarily being called out
on RFPs at this point, they will be. And you can be at the head of the line.
And at the very least, if you’re talking to your perspective employer,
even if they don’t necessarily understand what it is, they can get that
information from you and it is a value-add.
So in short, I would say that education is the opening of the door,
but particularly in the technical fields, that Master’s Degree
in some IT-related field, is not going to be as much
of a value-add to your career as going back and getting
these certifications. They are also more focused,
they can allow you to specialize in particular areas that are of interest
and I think it is imperative that anybody who truly wants to make a long term
vital career in this industry has to go out and do this.