Re: Certification

[Tom Limoncelli <tal@plts.org>]

I said before I haven't decided how I feel on this topic.  However,
here are some thoughts in response to Scott's message.

On Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 03:06:06PM -0600, Scott Williams wrote:
> That's the daunting task. Our field is so incredibly diverse. Right now, I 
> manage Solaris 2.5, SUNOS 4.1.4, SVR4, IRIX, LINUX, NT, MAC, with multiple 
> hardware platforms: Sparc20, Sparc Server2000, Digital ULTRIX, Linotype-Hell 
> Davinci, Auspex, Intel PC's, Mac's, Blah, Blah......

There is already a vender specific certification for just about
everything you mentioned above.  I think that if SAGE did a certification
program it would be cross-platform or non-platform specific.  We
couldn't do a "Sun with a smattering of Mac certificate", a "IRIX
and Sun with more PCs every week certificate", "Novell with their
IP stuff", "Linux blah blah", "blah blah".  etc. etc.

I'm not volunteering to be part of the project, however here are some
but here are some sample questions that come to mind:  (they would have
to be turned into multiple choice questions)

Category: Disaster Recovery  
   1. An incremental backup is...
   2. Given the following requirements, which backup schedule is appropriate
	etc.
   3. Which of these policies best fits the requirement that a minimal
	amount of tapes would be required (assume incrementals grow
	by 10% each day, 7 days a week).

Category: Security
   1.  What are the 4 areas of computer security (authentication, privacy
		non-repudiation, damn... i can't remember)
   2.  What is the best starting place for defining a security policy
		(my answer would be "deciding what you are trying to protect"
		or "define the threat")

Category: Front-line user support
   1.  What are the 5 stages involved in resolving a user-reported problem?
   2.  The chief benefit of dividing user support into a multi-tiered
	system is...
   3.  If a user's reported problem can not be reproduced, it is best to...

Ethics:
	These questions would not judge a person or be biased towards
particular policies, but instead verify that the person has thought
of the issues and acknowledges they exist.

> now. What I can do now. In this field, a BS is obsolete in several years. I 
> have to always learn, keep on top. The technology is changing too fast. As a 

One of the goals would be to have questions that are never going
to be obsolete.  The ones above are in that category (at least I made
my best effort).

Vendor Certifications are specifically not timeless.  The Novel version
x certificate isn't useful when version x+1 is released.  IFF we do
such a certification program, it should be non-platform specific.

--tal

-- 
     Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal --  tal@plts.org
  "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation
         and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony
 "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected
        and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow