Cisco Announces Big Certification Changes
Computer networking titan Cisco livened up its annual conference this week by announcing major changes to its popular certification program. The big news out of Cisco Live is that Cisco will be switching up some of the titles and levels of its certifications, as well as routing interested tech professionals into a new program that bridges networking and DevOps. Perhaps the most striking of the changes is the plan to revert back to a single Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) credential. Just a few years ago, Cisco splintered its CCNA certification across nine different subdisciplines. That will change as of Feb. 24, 2020, with the Cloud, Collaboration, Cyber Ops, Data Center, Industrial, Routing and Switching, Security, Service Provider, and Wireless specializations being replace by a new all-in-one CCNA cert. Even the Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) credential, far more established as a standalone cert, is being replaced by the new CCNA. There will still be specialized standalone credentials at the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) and Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) tiers, albeit fewer of them. The DevNet certification program, spanning the Associate, Professional, and Expert levels, is entirely new.
CompTIA: So You Want to Be an IT Trainer
Lots of people, once established in an IT career, more or less advance and maintain their own knowledge of the profession through some combination of on-the-job learning, certification, and self-study spanning books, product documentation, labs or demos, and so forth. Many learners, however, first enter the information technology realm or cross over to various IT disciplines with the benefit of person-to-person training and teaching. So who trains those trainers, and how did they get to the gatekeeping position where most established or aspiring tech professionals encounter them? Blogger Eric Larson pulled back the curtain on the technical training realm over at the IT Career News blog of tech industry association CompTIA last week. If you feel that your particular IT genius might be best suited to teaching others, then it's definitely worth your time to hop over and take a look. Among its other credentials, CompTIA offers a tech teaching cert, Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+), so there's an obvious slant to Larson's piece, but it's got lots of other good information about technical training as well.
Get the Straight Dope About Java SE 11 Certification
The latest in a long line of certifications that address Oracle's long-lived Java programming language made its debut earlier this year. If you're interested in Java, still one of the most popular internet programming languages out there despite its various security issues, then Java certification is a great way to go, and Java SE 11 certification in particular is probably the path you want to pursue. The SE 11 credential was released in March, and now there's a downloadable PDF guide available to answer whatever questions you might have.
EC-Council Ready to Certify Ethical Hacking "Masters"
EC-Council has been the clear leader in the ethical hacking certification realm for a while now, with its popular flagship Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) credential the more-or-less universally acknowledged gold standard. Until now, that is. EC-Council announced this week that it is raising its own bar with a new "master"-level CEH credential. Candidates who want to gain CEH Master certification will need to pass a sure-to-be-grueling six-hour exam that requires them to prove their skills through a series of performance-based challenges.
CertMag Offers Advice to Aspiring Network Designers
Computer networks are everywhere, and the network design skill set required to plan and build new networks is increasingly valued and highly employable. If you've had any level of interest in learning network design, then you can access a wealth of good information about the profession from a new article at CertMag.com, the official website of Certification Magazine. The article describes in detail what's expected of a professional network designer, and has good suggestions about education (including certification) and training available to (and expected of) those hoping to enter the field.
That's all for this edition of Certification Watch. Please keep your certification news and tips coming to the GoCertify News Editor.
