Getting Certified and Just a Bit Certifiable

C.J. Kelly

 

January 29, 2007 (Computerworld) I recently attended CCSP boot camp. I was there for a very specific purpose. No, two very specific purposes. Like most people in attendance, I wanted to achieve the Cisco Certified Security Professional certification, but I also wanted in-depth training on the technologies that my staff deploy and I manage.

Technical boot camps are grueling. Classes normally begin at 8 a.m. and end at 8 p.m. We started at 7:30 a.m., worked through lunch and finished after 8 p.m. At the end of the training, I was physically exhausted, but my mind felt invigorated. One thing that kept me going was thinking about how privileged I am to have had the opportunity to receive this level of training. Usually, technical managers aren’t sent to technical training. But as I have said before, I believe that the best technical managers are both people-savvy and technically proficient enough to keep things on track. And I am very fortunate to work for someone who understands and supports that idea.

I hold several certifications in addition to my formal education, but in the past, I chose the self-study route. Boot camp was all new for me.

Almost Derailed

On the long flight home, I had time to think about boot camp vs. self-study using textbooks or online programs. I have always preferred self-study, which suits my particular learning style very well. I have an almost photographic memory, read very fast and grasp concepts quickly. I don’t necessarily need interaction with other students or an instructor — in fact, I find it distracting.

But just before I went to boot camp, I completed an online training program to master the prerequisites for the CCSP, and distractions nearly derailed the process. I have no complaint about the quality of the online program. It included information presentations, online “step into the lab” demonstrations, flash cards and several variations of what the real test would be like. My life is crazy busy, so even though I took several full days to do the online training from home, I still found myself constantly interrupted.

For most people, blocking off the time you need for online training is the biggest obstacle. You have to open up your schedule and set aside the time for training; trying to do it piecemeal as time allows just won’t work. If this means closing your office door, do it. If it means working from home, do it. If it means going to the public library to get away from phones and pagers, do it. You have to manage the interruptions.

This same advice holds true for self-study offline. And because you don’t have an online program to guide you in what to study, you have to know what kind of materials to buy. For its own certifications, Cisco offers plenty of resources on its Web site. In fact, I ended up supplementing the online training with other self-study tools.

Camp CCSP

Boot camp is an immersion method. Distractions such as cell phones and pagers are discouraged. (I was surprised that laptops with Internet access were allowed.) There isn’t much socializing. Most people went from hotel room to boot camp and back to hotel room again with very little in between. The schedule is physically draining; my lab partner was very late on about the third day, citing complete exhaustion.

Nonetheless, the training was excellent. The instructor was not only very capable, but also a security consultant in real life, with day-to-day experience in the technologies we studied. Far from being distracted by the other students, I found myself relieved that there were like-minded people around to discuss issues with.

I would have to say that boot camp did the job. Of course, it’s expensive. Even though my state agency got a discount, the training for one person ran between $8,000 and $9,000, and that did not include airfare, meals or lodging. It did include vouchers for the five exams required to pass the CCSP certification test.

But some people drown when they’re immersed. Your brain can easily get overloaded when you’re trying to cram technical information into it for 12-plus hours a day. I survived it

, but boot camp isn’t my preference. Would I do it again? Yes, and in fact, I intend to soon. So, managers who are considering training options for their employees should definitely consider boot camp seriously. For some people, it will be the only way to give the work at hand the necessary focus. (Others, like me, may do very well with self-study, so don’t overlook that option.)

And shipping your employees off to expensive off-site training sends them a message loud and clear: You value them. Some managers worry that a big training investment could go to waste, since the employee could take his new skills and find a better-paying job. But my experience has been that making investments in people fosters loyalty. Expansive thinking on your part leads to expansive thinking on your employees’ part. You want that.

Certification training raises another issue. There’s a lot of talk that certifications don’t deliver a lot of value. But in my mind, certification training, and especially security certification training, is a way of making sure that every aspect of security has been covered. It’s the equivalent of requiring someone to have a college education as a job prerequisite.

Sure, certifications don’t guarantee you anything. But they do give you a high level of confidence that the person sitting in front of you knows the basics and can perform them well. I agree that experience trumps certifications any day of the week, but I look at certifications as a quality seal. And that’s good to have under any circumstances.