EC-Council Launches Global Certified Ethical Hacker Rankings
There's generally not a lot of crossover between the world of professional sports, where there is endless wrangling over how the top individual athletes should be ranked, and the world of professional computing, where ranking is typically restricted to measuring the speed or efficiency of various machines and processes. Now EC-Council is out to change all of that with the launch of a "Global Ethical Hacking Leaderboard" to rank the world's "best" ethical hackers. All of them? OK, maybe not all of them. For now, it appears, the Global Ethical Hacking Leaderboard is restricted to rating the gifts of white hat hackers who hold EC-Council's popular and widely respected Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) credential. EC-Council CEO Jay Bavisi said in a press release announcing the rankings that leaderboard will not attempt to weight the accomplishments of everyone who holds the credential. Rather, only the "absolute best" CEH holders – more specifically, those whose proficiency has been measure in special challenges required of those seeking to add "Master" to their CEH designation – will be ranked. "These professionals were subjected to the highest standards of testing in the field of ethical hacking via challenges posed by EC-Council," Bavisi said. "Only a limited number of Ethical Hackers have managed to make the leaderboard as competition is intense."
Young IT Professionals Can Benefit from Professional Networking
It's generally considered wise to start making professional connections as soon as possible upon entering the workforce in one's chosen profession. Depending on various circumstances like where you live, or where you go to school, many people can even start the process prior to completing their formal education. The value of such professional networking is the subject a recent post to the ISACA Now Blog of cybersecurity and governance association ISACA. Blogger Morgan Phelps, a security specialist at Bank of America, emphasizes the value to newcomers of meeting and greeting fellow professionals and includes a number of tips about how and where to get started. For example, Phelps recommends that professional networking should be part of the regular work routine for young professionals, as opposed to something that is only considered during active job seeking. Phelps suggests that professional connections will be most personally rewarding and professionally fruitful when treated like any other relationship – ongoing attention will be far more appreciated than occasional consideration. If you're just starting out in IT, or if you've never thought much about professional networking, then it's worth clicking over to the full post.
The Impact of IT on the Construction Industry
IT affects almost everything and it's always interesting to get direct information about the impact of new and emerging technologies in places that one wouldn't immediately think of technology as being highly visible and influential. A recent post to the IT Career News blog of tech industry association CompTIA highlights different ways that technology is changing the construction industry. Excerpted from a recent CompTIA conference presentation by Steven Capper, CIO of Dutch construction services firm Royal BAM Group, the post includes specifics about the impact of drones, business information modeling, artificial intelligence, and more. It's an eye-opening read and suggests a lot of the unsuspected, behind-the-scenes impacts of ongoing IT growth and development.
So You Want to Be a Data Engineer
"Data scientist" is probably the most glamorous Big Data job title, but data engineers are just as vital to analytics revolution. Data engineers do all of the heavy lifting required to create and maintain the data infrastructure that funnels massive amounts of data to the fingertips of data scientists. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy or be good at, then it's probably worth your time to click over to CertMag.com, the official Certification Magazine website, and jump into a new article that outlines the specifics of data engineering and provides information about how to prepare for and jump into the profession. For example, an aspiring data engineer should equip himself or herself with a university computer science or information technology degree and then be prepared to continually supplement that foundation by learning new technologies and generally keeping pace with a fast-evolving IT specialization. Skilled data engineers are already highly sought after, and the profession is certain to keep expanding as companies and organizations seek new and better means of milking the massive amounts of data that have become as commonplace and essential to business function as cubicles and office chairs.
That's all for this edition of Certification Watch. Please keep your certification news and tips coming to the GoCertify News Editor.
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