Certification - May 2008 - (Page 39) INSIDE CERTIFICATION continued from page 25 INTERFACE continued from page 33 “If they have a certification in one of those core technologies, it gives them a stamp of approval. One, I know what they’re interested in and have some reassurance that they’re qualified to work in that area. Second, we’re a Gold Certified Partner with Microsoft. We’re required to have a certain number of qualified engineers on staff to maintain that. I will look for those candidates, and if I have two that are equal, I’m going to take the guy who’s certified. It’s the piece that may push them over the edge.” The on-the-ball employer hunter will assess the potential company environment and tailor his or her employment pitch to match its needs. For instance, given FrontPages’ organizational structure and mission, LaMear said it doesn’t tend to look overlong at candidates fresh out of college. Its need for technical capability and realworld experience is too great, and employees must be able to ramp up and perform quickly. “We’re moving so fast [that] a lot of those guys just coming out of school are not a good fit for our environment,” he said. “We like to see them cut their teeth as a network admin at a small- to mediumsized business and then come back and see us in year three when they’ve got some real-world experience and a little bit of knowledge of networking or whatever their interest is. We’ve done the internship route and for our business it makes more sense to avoid that. We spend so much time training people [that] you don’t necessarily get to see the return.” So candidates looking to sign on with FrontPages can assume they will be rated first on real-world experience. Second, they will be rated on passion for technology. “In anything you’re going to do, if you don’t enjoy whatever it is, you’re not going to be as successful as the person who 24x7 lives in that world and has a passion for it,” LaMear said. “I’ve found that makes a huge difference in the type of team that you’re building.” Finally, LaMear reiterated that FrontPages employees have to have great communication skills. They need to “be able to speak and write well so [they] can have a proper conversation with a customer,” he said. “If you’ve got someone with experience, and [he or she has] passion for what they’re doing and communicates well, that’s the perfect candidate.” 8 – Kellye Whitney, kwhitney@certmag.com Certification and Training Still in Demand In this rapidly changing field, the 2008 GISWS shows that certification and training still play a major role in the profession to keep staff apprised of the latest security trends and issues. Nine out of 10 (ISC)2 member respondents who are responsible for hiring information security staff indicated it is important for their staffs to have information security certifications, with 78 percent considering certification with (ISC)2 the most critical, followed closely by ISACA’s Certified Information Security Auditor (CISA) certification, at 76 percent. Employee competence (73 percent) and the quality of work (60 percent) were cited as the most prominent reasons their organizations require staff to have information security certifications. Seven out of 10 non-(ISC)2 respondents who are responsible for hiring consider it important that their staffs have information security certifications, and four out of 10 non-(ISC)2 respondents indicated that their organizations require staff to have information security certifications. The most prominent reasons stated for this mandate include quality of work (70 percent), company policy (68 percent) and employee competence (61 percent). The survey shows that training continues to grow, as one-third of (ISC)2 member respondents indicated they expect the amount of training and education they’ll receive in the coming year to increase. The survey shows a particular demand for training in applications and systems development security (43 percent), information risk management (43 percent), business continuity and disaster recovery planning (41 percent) and forensics (41 percent). Demand for training and education had the highest response from those security professionals with more than 15 years of experience. The results of the 2008 GISWS validate that the field of information security continues to gain recognition as a profession in its own right. Organizations large and small are embracing the need for it. 8 Eddie Zeitler is executive director for (ISC)2. He can be reached at editor@certmag.com. May 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 39
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