VAR training

IT professionals seek job security from security certs

Want a job? Get a security certification.

A new study of more than 1,500 IT workers by CompTIA finds that approximately 37 percent are planning to earn some sort of security technology certification over the next five years. About 18 percent of them will go in for an “ethical hacking” certification (I didn’t even know they had official certs for that!) while about 13 percent will focus on security forensics.

Other certification areas in which IT professionals intend to invest include green IT, healthcare IT, mobile technology and software as a service (SaaS) best practices.

The key driver for interest in new certifications is the promise of a career boost: 88 percent of the certification holders included in the CompTIA study said they took them to improve their resume. About the same number cited personal growth as the reason.

You can more information about the study on the CompTIA site.

Training: Why you should be offering it

In my last entry, I cited a survey Symantec fielded last fall indicating that IT budgets would either stay the same or go up in the following 12 months. The survey drilled down a bit on training: 78% of respondents said training budgets would either stay the same or go up in the next two years.

That figure makes sense. Think about it: In the past few years we have thrown a lot of solutions at customers: server virtualization, networked and virtualized storage, archiving, improved data protection, and disaster recovery. Continued »