RE: Re: University Degree or CISSP

["King, Stephen" <sking () chnct org>]

This thread appears to be going on for sometime and has obviously touched us all personally. Aside from the 
philosophical justification of either position, the fact remains: The employer decides what credentials they want from 
a hire. (end of story).  Furthermore, the CISSP designation is a security generalists certification aimed at management 
level professionals; and if you are management 99.9% of the time you are required to have a degree anyhow. If you are 
to be a practitioner of "hands-on" technical controls and other "front linesman" work you most likely want a 
certification like a GSEC or something. 

Just my two Cents.

Stephen CISSP, CISA   

-----Original Message-----
From: Al Sutton [mailto:asutton () argosytelcrest com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 6:37 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Re: University Degree or CISSP

I've also been holding fire on commenting, but as someone who has worked in
a univeristy and for large corporates I hope I can make a useful
contribution.

Degrees are about teaching people how to teach themselves. They're about
taking someone who has usually had years of spoon fed education (i.e. "here
is the books you need to read and here are the pages that have the answer")
and teaching them effective ways of researching a problem for themselves and
finding a solution (i.e. "I want to do X, find me the solution"). The
subject of the degree gives you knowledge of a subject field and helps you
know where to start looking, but at the end of the day pretty much any
graduate should be able to take a problem and start to find a solution using
the resources available to them (even if it means asking other people for
help).

CISSP is about giving you specific knowledge. It's not about showing you how
to learn, its about giving you the knowledge to know where to look when
someone asks you a question about IT security.

Knowing which one is more applicable depends on the job you want to do. If
you can demonstrate to others that you can do research on your own to find
solutions, and others have commented that you're good on it, you may not
want to go down the degree route. On the other hand if you think that your
abililty to find solutions effectively can do with a little help, and you
can find a degree in a relevant subject, then you'll probably find a degree
is of us.

Whichever you decide, I wish you good luck, because initially finding the
right job at the right time that pays the right salary is sometimes as much
about luck as qualifications.

Al.
--
Al Sutton
Argosy TelCrest
W: www.argosytelcrest.com


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Computer Emergency Response Teams, and Digital Investigations.

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