CCIE Security 4.0 Certification: Feeding the Need

The CCIE Routing and Switching track has been the most popularly sought after certification to date but with massive cyber attacks on major organizations hogging the headlines for the past five years, the demand for CCIE Security certified experts is increasing and those of you who have not fully decided upon which certification to test for would be wise to choose CCIE Security certification.

Before the advent of these well-planned, well-organized and multi-pronged cyber attacks, most job openings for network security professionals were in the banking sector and the security needs were pretty well-defined with data protection as one of the priorities.  Now that large companies  in different industries have come under attack, not just individual network security professionals are sought after, but the corporations are hiring IT security staff.

The nature of the weapons cyber attackers are using are as volatile as the advances in internetworking technology, and network security professionals have to include cloud and wireless network security in their knowledge of multi-layer security systems.  Even as these security breaches evolve so should the knowhow and innovative talents of the IT security staff in anticipating and preventing potential breaches.

In response to these constantly warping real-world security threats, Cisco is introducing a new certification, CCIE Security 4.0, which will be sensitive to and up to date with present  day security applications involving cloud, multimedia and networked wireless devices.  While CCIE Security 4.0 is under development,  and has no prerequisites, aspirants are advised to prepare themselves with CCNA Security and/or CCNP Security level certifications.  They also recommend at least three years of actual network security experience.

It would be good preparation to do your own studying of the evolution of cyber threats on different  systems and create your own scenarios for potential attacks and how you would deal with them.  The best way to do this would be to find a good vendor who can provide you with the latest workbooks and access to practice labs and rack rentals and using the old CCIE Security test preparations and the help of your vendor’s security experts, create your own lab scenarios and design solutions for dealing with security breaches and attacks similar to recent events and solve them under time pressure.

For those who would like to work on their CCNA Security or CCNP Security Certification before tackling CCIE Security 4.0, look into the CCNA Security Training and CCNP Security Training Portfolios of Presidential Training at http://www.presidential-training.com for help in preparing for the certification tests.  They also have security rack rentals and mock up labs for simulated exams.  Be prepared for exams that will not only test your individual security design capabilities but also your capacity to lead and manage a security team.

The perks for all these preparations is that of all networking jobs, network and IT security job salaries have had the highest rate of increase in the past two years, and it is increasingly an employee’s market as more and more companies are seeking to form or augment their security staff.