Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response)
From: "R. DuFresne" <dufresne () sysinfo com>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:38:08 -0400 (EDT)
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Laura Taylor wrote:
Certification is only a qualifier of technical skills.
This depends upon the certification, a CISSP is a management certification, and reflectys little on the technical skills of the person possessing. They are far more common these days and of minimal use to the technicall7y oriented except in getting aresume past HR/recruiters that lack the ability yo actually determine and define skills in the technical realm. Not to mention that certifications is a sub-industry of the field in and of itself and driven by pretty much stricktly monetary modifiers.
From my experience, there is always an obvious solution for the technical problems. The people problems are much more difficult to solve, and only years of experience polishes up a person's people skills.
This was once the case, buut, these days the market is blinded by the whole certification sub-industry. Try and get a resume lacking the three letter syndrome past HR/recruiters these days and see how well you flly. Useless anancronyms<sp?> mean more then experience r skills. Course the questions also remains, how far do recuriters and HR folks go in verifying certification? How about re-certification? <as though these mean much either>
Typically what separates junior level folks from senior level, or executive level, folks is more often not their technical skills, but their people skills -- at least in my opinion.
Yes, the more junior the tech, the closer they tend to be to the enduser level, and they tend to have better people skills, mgt and level 1 support often has forgotten what they once knew and used as a skill. Thanks, Ron DuFresne
-----Original Message----- From: firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com [mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com]On Behalf Of Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 4:24 PM To: Margles Singleton Cc: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com Subject: Certification (was Re:[fw-wiz] Vulnerability Response) On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Margles Singleton wrote:Something I noticed, however: the SANS conferences draw a large crowd -buta very small percentage of those attending ever certify. I think this demonstrates that old saw: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think...."I disagree. There's a difference between learning and certification. It's disingenious [although lucrative] to confused the two. Looking at the costs involved in certification, before addressing the question of the value of certification: Trolling through the SANS web pages, it looks like the course fees vary from ~$600 per tutorial, up to ~$900, if you register late. The GIAC certification is a mere $250 -per certification- with the SANS training - $450 -per cert- without SANS training [all in USD, of course]. Recertification [which is required every two years] is $120 [but will cover all the exams that you take]. The CISSP exam appears to be $450 USD - review courses all appear to be in the $2000+ USD range [~$2500 USD on average]. This is before you factor in travel, lodgings, and meals. If you can persuade your company that training you is valuable, and not likely to lead to your immediate departure for greener fields, that's definitely a bonus. Otherwise, you're looking at significant out-of-pocket costs unless you elect to challenge the exams [and even then you're looking at $450+ per exam] - not to mention time away from work, and travel costs if you don't live in a major metropolitan area. Moving on to the merits of certification, there's also the question of whether a certification actually says anything at all about your retained knowledge and ability, rather than your ability to cram and regurgitate enough information to pass an exam. I rather suspect that most of us succeeded in passing exams in high school and college/university that we'd be hard pressed to fathom today. That said, those letters are a quick way to get through the HR filters. cheers! ========================================================================== "A cat spends her life conflicted between a deep, passionate and profound desire for fish and an equally deep, passionate and profound desire to avoid getting wet. This is the defining metaphor of my life right now." _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
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Current thread:
- Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response), (continued)
- Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr (Jun 04)
- RE: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Laura Taylor (Jun 14)
- RE: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr (Jun 14)
- RE: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Marcus J. Ranum (Jun 14)
- Re: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Crispin Cowan (Jun 14)
- Re: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Vladimir Parkhaev (Jun 16)
- Re: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Dave Piscitello (Jun 18)
- Re: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Paul D. Robertson (Jun 18)
- Re: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Dave Piscitello (Jun 18)
- Re: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Vladimir Parkhaev (Jun 18)
- Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr (Jun 04)
- RE: Certification (was Re:Vulnerability Response) R. DuFresne (Jun 14)