CySA+: What's in a Certification Name Change?

Just yesterday, I was talking to an old friend and frequent co-author, about life, the universe, and everything. He just casually mentioned the recent name change for the CompTIA CyberSecurity Analyst Plus certification. Until recently, it had been known as the CSA+ certification.

On January 18, or thereabouts, CompTIA announced that it was changing that moniker to CySA+. It also indicated that, "CompTIA and its partners will make the change by June 29, 2018." (See Overview section, red text.) Sounds like it's no big deal, right? Wrong!

When I asked my friend what the name change meant to him, it turns out there was quite a bit of work in it for him. He had not only just worked on a book and practice exam for this new cert, he had also made a video. Therein lay the real rub.

"Changing text is easy," he said. "That's what makes Search-and-Replace such a beautiful thing." But he went onto relate that visuals, particularly in a video, are a different story. "We had to reshoot every scene that had the cert logo showing," he related to me.

"We'd just finished shooting before the holidays, and bam! Three weeks into January, we're back in the studio reshooting somewhere between a third and a half of the whole edited video."

Needless to say, this took some time. The switcheroo consumed plenty of person-hours and studio resources, and meant a bunch of extra work for all the various players involved.

That got me to thinking: How many other videos needed the same reworking? Quite a few, I'd be willing to bet! And, in looking around further where the logo appears, I see it showing up on book covers, practice test artwork, exam labels and vouchers, training course artwork, and so forth.

That's a whole lotta logos that need to be switched over from the old version to the new one. It kind of makes me wonder why CompTIA decided it was worth it to make this change. It also helped me to understand the magnitude of the effort and expense involved in the recent round of de-Confederate-ization.

In case my shorthand doesn't make sense, I'm talking about changing school, public building, and monument names, as well as signs, mascots, and so forth, all to remove prior association with the legacy of the Southern States and the Civil War. It's all in keeping with our society's decision to distance itself from symbols connected to the Confederate States of America.

And now that I mention it, that's another, if wholly different, CSA acronym for you. Could that explain why CompTIA switched to CySA from CSA? They're not saying so explicitly, but I have to imagine that it might somehow be connected.

You can decide that for yourself. As for me, I just want to remind you that the CyberSecurity Analyst+ certification from CompTIA is now available.

The exam costs $346 in the United States for those who don't work for a CompTIA membership organization. It's a mid-level, professional grade credential that follows after Security+, but that also precedes the CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP). �Nuff said.