topic Re: CPE - Pluralsight in Member Support

CPE - Pluralsight

mcnj — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 02:02:04 GMT

Would security courses from Pluralsight be approved for CISSP CPE's? I saw the below on their site

We currently do not have agreements in place with the following organizations:

(ISC)²; our material is not pre-approved for CPE credits, but should qualify for attending computer based learning. Please see (ISC)²'s CPE Policies and Guidelines document on how to submit your course viewing time manually.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 11:16:44 GMT

@mcnj, before adding the CPEs yourself, communicate with membersupport@isc2.org to confirm whether the course itself meets requirements, how many CPEs you can claim, whether they need validation, etc

That way, should you ever get audited by (ISC)2, your actions can be justified.

(For example, when I did a course for the CompTIA CASP on Cybrary, I sent membersupport@isc2.org all the details & got them to confirm the number of CPEs, & that the certificate from Cybrary would do for validation)

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

mcnj — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 12:47:24 GMT

Hi @Shannon, thanks for the reply. Some of these courses 1, 2 or 3 hours, so I'd emailing them quite often. They don't mind that?

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 15:28:58 GMT

@mcnj wrote:
Hi @Shannon, thanks for the reply. Some of these courses 1, 2 or 3 hours, so I'd emailing them quite often. They don't mind that?

You needn't claim the CPEs immediately, so you can note down details of the completed courses --- course duration, content, dates, etc --- & send these periodically to membersupport@isc2.org, perhaps on a weekly basis, for them to advise / confirm.

Your record would let you keep track of the courses you attend & what you claimed CPEs for --- & avoid the chance of you inadvertently entering duplicate CPEs on the portal.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

denbesten — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 16:52:50 GMT

(ISC)² has a program that enables certain CPE providers to do the busy work of entering the CPEs instead of you having to do it yourself. Plualsight's comment implies that simply they do not have such an agreement and therefore you must do the clerical work yourself.

Here are the advan

Submitted-on-behalf

CPE provider does the clerical work
Some providers (I'm looking at you, Brighttalk) do not reliably submit.
Member responsible for validating credit is received
CPE provider defends submission in the event of audit

Member Submitted

Member does the clerical work.
Member must understand the submission process.
Member defends the submission in the event of audit.
Always an option (other than when the portal is do

I equate asking MemberServices for advise to asking a lawyer for legal advise. They can help you "learn" the rules and can offer friendly advise. However, in both cases, seeking advise does not guarantee that your case would win if it came to audit/trial.

Your best defense if to understand the rules, as published in the CPE handbook because ultimately it boils down to "use your best professional judgement" and "defending your actions to an auditor". Both of these activities should be well understood by CISSPs.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 17:59:50 GMT

@denbesten wrote:

I equate asking MemberServices for advise to asking a lawyer for legal advise. They can help you "learn" the rules and can offer friendly advise. However, in both cases, seeking advise does not guarantee that your case would win if it came to audit/trial.

Your best defense if to understand the rules, as published in the CPE handbook because ultimately it boils down to "use your best professional judgement" and "defending your actions to an auditor". Both of these activities should be well understood by CISSPs.

@denbesten, I believe there's a difference. A lawyer that one approaches for legal advice isn't necessarily representative of the entity related to the query. Since we're talking about (ISC)2 Support here, I'd assume their confirmation can be taken as that of (ISC)2.

No doubt its up to us to understand the rules, but we should also get the organisation's confirmation. In the event of an audit & an explanation about manual CPE addition, consider the following justifications :-

I did this based on my understanding of the rules
I did this after obtaining a confirmation from (ISC)2
I did this based on my understanding of the rules, after obtaining a confirmation from (ISC)2

I can't guarantee that the 2nd explanation will be accepted, but it looks much better than the 1st. Of course, the 3rd is the best one.

To provide an example, sometime back I wanted to tour a city in a country offering a visa-on-arrival. A travel company handling my booking offered an itinerary that involved a transit at the capital's airport, where visas are provided at the immigration --- but the transit time was just 1 hour. I doubted the time would suffice, and expressed my concerns to the travel support person. He assured me that I could obtain the visa at my final stop, but I later found out this wasn't the case, and that I could potentially miss the connecting flight. When I asked the travel company to reschedule the booking to rectify this, they claimed it wasn't their responsibility, so I told them my booking was based on the advice of their own staff. They asked for proof, and once I sent them a chat transcript with the support person, they did an investigation, & then rescheduled my booking at their own cost.

@SamanthaO_isc2, please let us know if there is a preferred method to get a confirmation from (ISC)2 about the validity of CPEs in situations like this. Thanks.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

mcnj — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:41:14 GMT

Not much to 'defend'. The handbook states "Education course/seminar", which is what Pluralsight is, self-paced /computer based training

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

amandavanceISC2 — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 19:37:18 GMT

@mcnj To confirm, members may submit CPEs for any legitimate training they complete. We ask that you use your best professional judgement when determining if the training is from a legitimate provider. You may submit 1 CPE per hour of attendance and round to the nearest quarter hour if it is not a full hour.

Best Regards,
Amanda Vance

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 05:16:03 GMT

@amandavanceISC2 can a confirmation from membersupport@isc2.org regarding CPE eligibility be relied on?

As in, if I have a doubt about the CPEs, take it to them and then obtain a go-ahead from them to add the CPEs, can I bank on this in the event of an audit? Or is there some alternate channel for this with (ISC)2?

Please clarify, coz I've always been getting their confirmation to supplement my own judgement when it comes to adding CPEs --- but if it's not of much use, I needn't continue doing that.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

amandavanceISC2 — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 12:33:40 GMT

@Shannon Unfortunately, we can only tell you to use your best professional judgement. As long as the material is coming from a legitimate source and is either domain related (Group A) or professional development (Group B), you may submit the CPEs. In the case of an audit, you would just submit proof that you attended or viewed the CPE submission. If the CPE auditor feels this material is not domain related or professional development, they will let you know.

Best Regards,
Amanda Vance

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 18:45:20 GMT

@denbesten, it seems that you were right about the 'lawyers'

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 18:57:32 GMT

@mcnj, in view of all this, perhaps you should ensure that you've met the minimal amount of CPEs using the sources provided on (ISC)2's site itself, and use other sources to supplement these.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

denbesten — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 22:11:59 GMT

@Shannon,

I suspect you are over-thinking this and causing yourself unnecessary stress. Just earn a few extra CPEs (e.g. 10%) and rest easy knowing that you can afford to lose a few audits.

I have been audited on about 2% of my submissions. Each has been for a single CPE submission and came within a month-ish of submission. In all cases, I have (over) responded with three pieces of information and passed with no further follow-up.

Evidence that I attended, such as a screenshot, an email confirmation, a completion certificate, etc.
A copy of what caused me to believe it relates to one or more of the domains, such as the overview slide, the online description, etc.
A thank you and an offer to provide anything else they may need.

Historically, I emailed the first two to myself to create a timestamp and so I could find the evidence if needed. With the "new" portal, I now attach them to each submission, with the hopes that my first auditor contact will include a declaration that I passed --- instead of asking for more detail.

The ultimate way to minimize both risk and effort is to enter month 31 of your cycle with 120 credits and finish month 36 with 160 credits. This will leave you with 40 credits available to cover audit failures. If unneeded, they all end up rolling over to your next cycle, so no effort wasted.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

Shannon — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 23:10:33 GMT

@denbesten wrote:
@Shannon,

I suspect you are over-thinking this and causing yourself unnecessary stress. Just earn a few extra CPEs (e.g. 10%) and rest easy knowing that you can afford to lose a few audits.

@denbesten, rest assured this isn't causing stress; I can rely on the politics I see at work for that...

I maintain more than the required number of CPE credits, so even if there's an audit there is no possibility of inconveniences occurring. Like you said there's the roll-over, limited to 40 surplus CPEs earned in the last 6 months, & so there's no harm claiming CPEs, long as the minimal required is satisfied from verifed sources.

However, in case @mcnj ins't familiar with the caveats here, we're simply providing advice and clarifications.

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

mcnj — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 00:50:27 GMT

Thanks for the replies everyone. I appreciate the assistance. I will continue doing what I'm doing 🙂

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

mcnj — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 15:34:52 GMT

i have one more question on this. When I've been entering these security-based CBT courses, I enter them under category "Education Course". Is that correct? Since I'm watching these courses online, wasn't sure if I should be using "Online webinars, podcasts and other online materials"

What do you all do for online courses like this, such as Cybrary

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

amandavanceISC2 — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 15:37:23 GMT

@mcnj That is a great question! Going forward, I would submit them under "Online webinar, podcast or other online training" as this is more for webinars and CBT. The category for "Education Course" is more for seminars.

Best Regards,
Amanda Vance

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

mcnj — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 16:09:43 GMT

Hi Amanda,

Thanks for the quick reply! That's great to know. I'm assuming if I attended a course from company, such as Global Knowledge or SANS, I would list it under "Education Course"?

Re: CPE - Pluralsight

amandavanceISC2 — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 16:20:20 GMT

@mcnj Yes, you have it correct. Any courses that are class-room based would fall under "Education Course".

Best Regards,
Amanda