New certification to verify cyber threat detection skills

Cyber security is an increasingly essential skill set, but it can be hard for businesses to verify that they're employing people with the right abilities.

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is launching a new, vendor-neutral certification. CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CSA+) is the first of its kind to bring behavioral analytics to the forefront of assessing cyber threats.

The CSA+ certification will offer a broad-spectrum validation of the knowledge and skills required to configure and use cyber-threat detection tools, perform data analysis and interpret the results to identify vulnerabilities, threats and risks to an organization. It certifies knowledge of a data-driven approach to information security.

"The Internet of Things is not only bringing greatly expanded capability to homes and businesses, it's also opening up potentially billons of new points of vulnerability that need to be secured, " says CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux. "It's an economic and societal imperative to train and certify hundreds of thousands of IT professionals with the analytical skills they need to address the complexity and diversity of threats as they multiply."

The new CSA+ certification strengthens CompTIA's portfolio of security credentials. It bridges the skills gap between CompTIA Security+ and the CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP) exam to create a vendor-neutral cybersecurity career pathway.

There are three levels of security certification. CompTIA Security+ is the benchmark for best practices in IT security, covering essential principles for network security and risk management. CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CSA+) focuses on skills associated with the use of threat detection tools, data analysis and the interpretation of results to identify vulnerabilities, threats and risks. CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP) certifies critical thinking and judgment across a broad spectrum of security disciplines.

You can learn more about the certification and what's required to gain it on the CompTIA site.

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