topic Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert? in Career Discussions

What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Ravenshroud — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 02:45:43 GMT

I find this feature of our certification renewal, and not just the 40 points, drives me to push the envelope.

Do you have a monthly goal? 10+ 20+ 30+?

The underlying question is really, "How hard do you push yourself to be at the top of your game in this field?"

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Badfilemagic — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 12:19:15 GMT

I have done 64 for my 2017/2018 renewal cycle so far. That’s for two certs (CISSP and CSSLP), but becaus of the delta and when I earned some, they couldn’t be applied to both. CSSLP is “paid up” in terms of CPEs until 2019. I still need 14 more for my CISSP by September. I’ll have that before end of Feb though.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

nagarajan — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 13:37:54 GMT

I prefer taking up training for myself and do training for others, read the Info Sec magazine, and engage in other ways to get CPEs and also how to improve to deliver the best.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

CISOScott — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 13:50:13 GMT

It really depends. One year I had a lot of job turmoil and moving houses to deal with so I only got the minimum that year. If I take 2-3 masters courses then I easily have 90 right there. If I know that I will not be able to attend school then I work to earn some every month. I try not to let a qtr of the year go by without earning something AND more importantly submitting them.

I keep a folder with some kind of printout in case I get an audit request for a particular CPE.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Ravenshroud — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:00:36 GMT

Ha. I keep an audit folder too. Security people right?

I like being pushed and I use these cert renewals to motivate me. Because sometimes life doesn't naturally provide that motivation.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

joethejettoo — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:23:33 GMT

698 for 2017--went to 4 months of training...

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Early_Adopter — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 16:09:38 GMT

It's good to have some padding, in case some are invalidated, because, oh I don't know you turned up for class tired and emotional.

But I'd generally try to treat them like Strunk and White and keep them down, brevity the soul of wit etc.

In the interest of the threads reporting last year with ISC2 I submitted 45 A and 48 B.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

JoePete — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 16:45:39 GMT

Given the responses so far, I tend to fall on the low side - usually just a little more than the required. I'm sure if I thought of every possible CPE, it could be a lot more. Good security folks are always learning and to some extent always teaching, which I think is part of the thinking behind the CPE. However, a good CPE on paper isn't always a good CPE in practice and vice verse. Particularly vendor presentations are quite suspect. I probably have at least 40 hours of just vendor time a year, but rarely do I count any of it as CPE. Most vendors I find to be selling snake oil. Some vendors are very good and educational, but usually the education only happens after the presentation, when you get past the marketing drivel, but again, I find most vendor presentations to almost fall into the category of anti-education, often simplifying a problem and overselling their solution.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Early_Adopter — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 17:38:55 GMT

But what if your snake is like really, really rusty...?

Yeah, this I think is a challenge. Despite working for a vendor, I tend to find little value in vendor presentations for education because mostly they are sales pitches, and are just being repurposed for CPEs. Now that's not to say that they are bad per se(a world with no sales or marketing people would need to radically shift its economic model or we'd all starve), but it does mean there is an enormous amount of assertion and the message is the less interesting 'we fix it', rather then 'this is how you might approach it'.

The problem statement tends to be at the front and sometimes it's useful, but more often than not it's specific to the solution.

Maybe ISC2 should vet it's CPEs more comprehensively - or have rules like no product name, and show multiple references in the press for the issue you want to talk about?

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Ravenshroud — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 22:09:46 GMT

@joethejettoo wrote:
698 for 2017--went to 4 months of training...

ROFL Joe, you win!

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Ravenshroud — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 22:12:57 GMT

Maybe ISC2 should vet it's CPEs more comprehensively - or have rules like no product name, and show multiple references in the press for the issue you want to talk about?

Man, if we have to vet CPEs, we have problems. There are so many opportunities in a year that if you get anywhere near the minimum, it is only because you don't want the administrative headache of tracking them.

If there are people not getting enough opportunity, I am guessing they will not be on this forum to refute that....

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Early_Adopter — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 08:06:59 GMT

Yeah, case top point I lapsed my CISSP the first time around because I was very busy and had better things to do than track them. There is a huge opportunity, it's just how do you verify the quality of what's submitted and whether people were taking it?

When I say 'it's CPE's' I speaking more about the ones offered by ISC2 itself - just as an example rather than getting just one vendor or a vendor plus auditor to speak you could ask for people from 2-3 vendors in the same think about the problem generally and avoid spin/positioning.

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

billclancy — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:21:40 GMT

Each January, I do 40 hours of webinars. That gets me in the compliance zone no questions asked. After that my DOD job requires me to do quite a bit of training each year. I also drive myself to obtain whatever cert I think will keep me on the leading edge of the IT/IA industry. This year,(2018) my CISSP CPEs are at 120 hours. That's above normal, but I frequently hit close to 100 hours. I may have to take two rather long classes totaling 80 more hours before this year is over 🙂

Re: What is the most CPEs you've submitted in a year for one cert?

Beads — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 18:24:53 GMT

Having three, two of which overlap, CISSP and ISSAP with the HCISPP being a bit of an outlier means having to watch things a bit more closely. Generally I do the bi-monthly quiz and whatever webinar(s), SANS course work and "other" category training I am doing is generally more than sufficient to keep everything up to date.

Ironically, the hardest part is finding Healthcare security training worth my interest and can be difficult to find such that meets my own learning goals.

- beads