Hi Everyone,
On the weekend I found out that ISC2 were offering free training and a free certification exam. The exam alone apparently is normally $299 USD so I was interested!
I asked around and I was told that this was not a buy swampland in Florida thing but had real value. Being free it was for me, although I will never forget the age old mantra that the only thing free is cheese in a mouse trap.
Nevertheless, I pushed forward. The training was not difficult and much of the IT part I knew or was familiar with. Not to say it was easy but as Data Protection professionals we probably don’t realize sometimes just how far we have floated over to the side of security. Or perhaps better put, how much Security and Data protection have shifted towards each other. For someone brand new to either field this would not be a walk in the park.
That does not mean to say you should skim through all the training sections. I found some terminology knew and some meanings slight differing. Even if some of it was just a refresher, it was still well worth the effort. I did skip the videos as I don’t normally like situational teaching (i.e. telling a story to explain a concept). That is a matter of personal preference.
Since my work schedule was pretty full I decided to schedule the exam early at 8 am. This is an in person exam and luckily there was a test center downtown. I almost paid for being lazy as instead of cycling (only 9 kms away) I took the subway and it got delayed in the tunnel. Now this was a free exam but nevertheless muscle memory set in from countless previous exam experience i.e. “you twit you are going to be late and everything i.e. $0 will be lost!!!” Luckily the train started up and made it in time. One annoying thing is that many buildings now have code locks on their bathrooms and I and 4 other test takers (I don’t know what exams they were taking) had to wait eagerly for the test center to open its doors so we could learn the code. I failed the hacker exam obviously because the bathroom code was the office number! On the other hand I figured being security stuff maybe they had a camera pointing to the washroom door to see who had hacker inclinations and how no matter what pressure they were under, would abide by the law and wait to get the code!
On top of the washroom, and I have been to a lot of in person exams, this was the toughest to get entrance too. They had the palm scanners that you had to go through multiple times, even to get into the test room. I wondered if they thought that Geoff Burke, who is not exactly unnoticeable could have snuck away and been replaced by a smarter version who would then sit the exam?
Security is security I was once told, the rules have to be a standard across the board or else there is chaos so I got the multiple scans to make sure it was me.
I can’t talk about the exam contents but it was a long one. At the end I left and I only got a read out stating that I had provisionally passed by that they needed to do some psychometrics and forensics to confirm the result.
I had no clue what psychometrics meant so wondered if this would entail a zoom session with hypnotism at a later date.
Luckily nothing of the kind took place. After getting confirmed though I did have to accept to become a member which is $50 a year in order to finalize my certification. That did annoy me a bit but then I looked a the membership perks, benefits and so on and figured it was worth it.
