Certification - September 2008 - (Page 36)

INSIDE CERTIFICATION A Threat to Your Career: Combating Certification Fraud BILL hORZEMPA There is a problem in the IT certification business. It affects all of us in the industry: hardware and software companies that sponsor certification programs, IT professionals who seek certification to validate their skills and employers who use certifications to identify qualified workers. Yet this problem is the elephant in the room that everyone knows is there, but no one wants to acknowledge. What is it? It’s certification fraud. When people cheat to obtain IT credentials, the value of certification is diminished for everyone. Fraud destroys the trust employers and individuals have in brand-name certifications that are the foundation of the IT profession. Rumors of cheating lead to doubt about the qualifications of all people who hold credentials. Employers no longer can assume that candidates can do a job, even if their certifications indicate they should have the requisite knowledge and skills. And when employers don’t value certification as a hiring, promotion or compensation criterion, IT professionals don’t see the value in attaining certification. Because companies want assurance that the people they’ve hired to design, build and manage the infrastructure and develop and deploy the applications are highly qualified IT professionals, and IT certifications help to offer this assurance. In the IT certification market, fraud is manifested mainly in two ways: providing illicit information or materials that help a person pass (or appear to pass) a qualifying exam, and using such materials or other improper means to pass an exam. The people who provide the materials do so largely for financial gain. For example, you can visit any number of “brain dump” sites to purchase an actual certification exam. Of course, these materials are marketed as “study aides,” but in reality they are stolen intellectual property. Certifying agencies never provide test materials to third-party vendors to sell or distribute. So how do brain dump sites obtain the test materials? Oftentimes, people take a certification test for the explicit reason of memorizing or otherwise capturing questions and answers and then reconstructing the exam for later sale. The other side of cheating involves an individual who uses illegal materials or means to pass an exam or obtain a certificate. Examples of this type of cheating include purchasing exam materials from a brain dump site prior to sitting for the exam; allowing another person to take a certification exam on your behalf; using forbidden materials or information during an exam; colluding with an exam proctor to obtain a passing score; and buying a fake certificate. It’s worth noting that some candidates cheat without knowing it and certainly without intending to do so. The student who purchases a “study aid” from a brain dump site might think he or she is buying information authorized by the exam developer. It’s only after sitting for the exam that test-takers learn they inadvertently bought the actual exam items. Intentionally or not, these students have benefited from illicit materials. When people cheat to obtain IT credentials, the value of certification is diminished for everyone. But certifications are important baseline measures of competency, since the IT industry doesn’t offer objective license programs to measure qualifications like in the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, some of the major players in the IT industry are banding together to attack this issue head-on. For the first time, companies such as Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, Prometric and many others collaborated for the same end goal, resulting in the creation of the new IT Certification Council (ITCC). Fraud is not a new problem; it has been around for years. What is new is the concerted, collaborative effort to eradicate it. What Is Certification Fraud? The Ramifications of Cheating Certification fraud is a fancy phrase for cheating to provide or obtain a credential. Why do people cheat? 6 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE September 2008 When certification fraud occurs, everyone loses: individuals, employers, certification agencies — even the general public. http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx http://www.ibm.com/us/ http://www.hp.com/ http://www.sun.com/ http://www.prometric.com/default.htm

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Certification - September 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Virtual Village Tech Careers Dear Techie Troubleshooting Academic Connection What We Like Look Ahead So You Want to Be an IT Major The Title Is Information Officer… Chief Information Officer Interface Network Administration: Working From the Ground Up Inside Certification Ad Index Endtag

Certification - September 2008

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