CASP – CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner News

It looks as though the Department of Defense has finally identified CompTIA’s Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP) certification as meeting the requirements for DOD employees who are at a IAT-3 or IAM-2 level.  In the past most people in these job levels took the CISSP exam in order to have a qualifying certification.  That may change with the CASP achieving this designation.  The following, evidencing this recent change, appeared in the February 1, 2013 issue of the Army CIO/G6, Cybersecurity Directorate Training and Certification Newsletter:

“The CompTIA Advanced Security Professional (CASP) certification (ISO 17024 accredited) was approved to be added to the DoD baseline list for IAT level III, IAM II, and IASAE level I and II during the 24 January 2013 Defense Information Assurance Program (DIAP) Certification Committee meeting. CASP targets the IT security professional with a minimum of 10 years’ experience in IT administration and at least 5 years of hands-on technical security experience. Once the certification is added to the DISA Information Assurance Support Environment baseline certification table, (at: http://iase.disa.mil/eta/iawip/content_pages/iabaseline.html), it will be official. Meanwhile, personnel may commence studying for this certification. Go to http://certification.comptia.org/getCertified/certifications/casp.aspx for more information.”

What will “sell” this exam to DOD employees and contractors seeking to meet the requirement of DOD Directive 8570.0 is the fact that it’s cost ($379) is substantially less than ISC2 charges for the CISSP exam ($599), coupled with at least a perception that it is easier than the CISSP.  For more information relating to exam content, I’d suggest reading the exam objectives.  In terms of study materials, I’m reading the Sybex CASP Study Guide.  I plan to take the exam withing 30 days and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Steve

 

CompTIA Cloud+ Beta Exam Thoughts

I took the CompTIA Cloud+ beta exam last week.  The unfortunate aspect of such an exam is that you don’t know whether you passed for a while.  In this case that won’t be until the “second half of 2013 (meaning sometime after July.  Oh well.  At least it didn’t cost me anything other than my time preparing for the exam.  Information about this exam is not all that easy to find.  I’d recommend doing a search on Google, utilizing either “CompTIA Cloud+” or the exam’s number CV1-001.

I have prepared an article and submitted it for publication at the GoCertify site.  You can reach the article HERE.

In the meantime, I’ve suspended my study efforts on the HIT Pro Implementation Manager exam.  I’m still questioning the viability of this whole program.  Much discussion has taken place on the LinkedIn group:

Health Information Technology Professional (HIT Pro)

Steve