topic Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that? in Member Support

Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

MD007 — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 23:59:13 GMT

I think this is disgusting. I dont feel I got value for money when it was $85 now how do you justify $125?

Its extortionate.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

mjionadi — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:03:41 GMT

It's even better when

You're required to maintain one in order to keep your position (DOD 8570).
Reimbursement isn't built into the contract you work on, so it's basically an unfunded mandate.
Your employer won't reimburse you out of its general funds.

I won't complain beyond that because I'm satisfied with the parameters of my position, but it is rather hypocritical.

I do take offense with (ISC)2's use of the term "modest" to describe the increase. It's almost 50%. That's more like a "significant" increase to me, but no self-respecting organization would ever use that term. The best way is not to use flowery language, just say you're doing it and explain why. I'll consider the adequacy of their explanation when I decide whether to vote to retain the current BOD at this year's elections.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

WhatEver — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:16:43 GMT

Yes, couldn't agree more.

ISC2 has lost it's credibility. Nowadays, it seems like a typical money pressing scheme, with added bells, and whistles everywhere. Why not just stick to the (original) minimal, core values of the organization?

I don't need this community platform, I don't need "online seminars", or other stuff. I simply want a credible organization, which is worth it's salt in terms of bringing forth / validating respected security professionals.

Seriously, I even did "earn" a badge, just to register my account on this community platform. Are we not supposed to be professionals, here?

But, I suppose, the motivation behind all this, is to push existing members into "earning" more certificates, as they no longer incur additional AMF (which, in itself is an improvement). But for the rest, this does not really help.

On the other hand, I suppose, there are more than enough people - especially from the US, which do profit from this organization, and therefore are willing to suck it up. For the rest of the world, the pay-off is not that great, however.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

Iamnotrobot — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:19:59 GMT

"Everything we do at (ISC)² is focused on helping you achieve your professional goals, better secure your organization’s critical assets and achieve our vision of inspiring a safe and secure cyber world."

Interesting. All ISC2 does is take the original $85 fee. Not clear what they do with it. Certainly not "helping you achieve your professional goals". No value add here.

For me, I have other certs that preclude anything to do with ISC2, so I really don't have a requirement to maintain dual certs.

Good thing they produced this just before I paid my AMFs.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

WhatEver — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:32:51 GMT

out of curiosity: what certificate do you consider as important / respected in your area of expertise?

And generally: This increase just shows, that some kind of socialistic idea has crept in this organization - take more from the single certificate holders, and distribute the benefit to those with multiple certificates.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

MD007 — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:59:43 GMT

ALL certs are important, especially ones like CISSP, critical in fact which is why we are slaves to this.
Honestly, I NEED to keep my cert up, so if they increased it to $1000 a year I'd still be forced to pay it so we are at their mercy.

They justify the fee by having the client portal websites, training material etc which is cool and all, but I dont feel like its value for money.
With my company pretty much freezing travel and training, its also hard to achieve the required CPEs which I think should be halved.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

sm — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 03:46:30 GMT

Per their count of CISSP holders- "CISSP Total 131,180" that comes out to about $16m annually just for CISSP

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

WhatEver — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 03:53:10 GMT

I suppose, it's not that simple. They will have to factor in the amount of "loss" for multi-cert. holders.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

danyo — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 04:10:56 GMT

Simply disappointing... the most interesting material I have found so far are the BrightTalk webinars but what is worst is the fact that I get contacted by the sponsors since I work for a big name corp. Also I have searched all over the ISC2 Chapters.. none exist for Los Angeles (Orange County is not Los Angeles). How is that even possible? Like others, I will end up paying the fees because every security/information manager position list CISSP as a desire/requirement.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

rslade — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 05:18:42 GMT

The Cash Cow!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r6LV02QscU

====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
A truly English protest march would see us all chanting: `What do
we want? GRADUAL CHANGE! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!'
- Kate Fox, `Watching the English'
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://twitter.com/rslade
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
https://is.gd/RotlWB

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

rslade — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 18:34:58 GMT

> WhatEver (Viewer) posted a new reply in Member Support on 01-23-2019 08:16 PM in

> I don't need this community platform, I don't need "online
> seminars", or other stuff. I simply want a credible organization, which is worth
> it's salt in terms of bringing forth / validating respected security
> professionals.

I may disagree with every word this person has typed, but I will defend, to the death if necessary, his/her/it's right to say it.

====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
Are you sure that [nine nine nine nine nine nine is] random?
That's the problem with randomness. You can never be sure.
www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20011025.html
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://twitter.com/rslade
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
https://is.gd/RotlWB

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

rslade — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 08:32:40 GMT

"With that in mind, we have invested heavily in strengthening the value we provide to our members."

"Strengthening the value." I like that. Sounds ... well, strong. Sounds supportive. So, what has (ISC)2 done for us recently?

Well, they killed the CISSPforum. It had been going for more than 20 years, and was a semi-valuable resource in terms of collective wisdom, but they killed it. They gave us this censored, redacted, and managed social media "community" platform instead, but they killed the forum.

However, we resurrected it. I'd like to invite you all to join it.

You can join for a low, one-time fee of $0. That's also C$0, and A$0, and 0 pounds, come to that. We accept Bitcoin. (We make fun of it, but we accept it.)

There is also an annual maintenance fee of $0. This will increase at a rate of not more than 0% per decade.

If you'd like to join us, and possibly stay long after you have decided to stop paying fees to ISC2, look into the FAQ, or here on the "community."

Tell your friends ...

(Seriously. The two previous messages I have posted on this topic tonight have both been censored, so you need to pass this info around.)

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

rslade — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 05:57:22 GMT

> mjionadi (Viewer) posted a new reply in Member Support on 01-23-2019 08:03 PM in

> I do take
> offense with (ISC)2's use of the term "modest" to describe the increase. It's
> almost 50%.

This is obviously some new meaning for the word "modest" of which I was
previously unaware ...

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

MikeGlassman — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 06:01:27 GMT

If you are going to disagree with every word he wrote, regardless of your statement that you will defend his right to free speech to the death, which is mute, since you won't really stand in front of a tank for that.

The author of the post is to my view, and I assure you, to the view of thousands in the community, right.

For many of us, these "perks" do not add anything or give us anything additional. I have my certification, I travel to conferences when I can and my company will pay for it, otherwise I get nothing from everything else.

Raising the fees by almost 50% is daylight robbery. There is no explanation as to why the choice was reached to charge that amount, and the fact that they are stopping to charge multiple fees for multiple certifications means squat to those of us who have only one.

They want to charge a higher fee for multiple certifications as one fee, fine, but leave the fee as it is for those of us who don't have more than one.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

MikeGlassman — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 06:04:09 GMT

I'm not sorry to say I think it's a low blow.

Want to charge one fee but more for people with multiple certifications, fine.

But leave the fee as it is, which is already high, for those with a single certification.

I have to cover all costs out of pocket, and the return I get is already describable as "meh", so it will become more so if I have to pay 125$'s with the same meh return.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

iluom — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 07:20:12 GMT

This is a cause to feel discouraging for professionals from Third World.

If ISC2 is committed to help members learn, grow and thrive or empower professionals this is not encouraging at least to some part of the globe.

I suppose, members are paying $85 does not mean they are financially capable of however, we are obligated and have great respect for the international,nonprofit membership association ISC2

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

François — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 07:58:10 GMT

This is a super bad move.

Except the cert, which is just an HR filter, (ISC)2 membership brings me exactly nothing.

The InfoSec community is already full of " - not CISSP" twitter handles, with this kind of behaviour it's only going to increase, impacting the value of our cert negatively.

The sites boast 140.000 members, that's an annual budget of more than $17 millions! Where goes all that money? What's the breakdown of the budget?!

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

dk93jk — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 08:17:24 GMT

Simply disappointing.

From now on, I will recommend all my contacts not to make this certification.

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

Shannon — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 09:27:18 GMT

I'll provide my sentiment in a time-line...

Let's look at what we get out of the membership and certification, and gauge our satisfaction with it --- what it was, and what it is now. Here's my perception, which has changed a lot, courtesy of the new AMF.

1) Webinars

Then: OK Now: DISSATISFIED

There are many useful sources of IT Security information out there, so long as you know where to look and what to subscribe to. No doubt the ones here are easy access here, but then you may not always get exactly what you were expecting.

2) Vulnerability Central

Then: OK Now: DISSATISFIED

I get alerts to vulnerabilities from a lot of sources, and most of them are redundant. From my job perspective, I only have to pay attention to the local ones. Once again, this facilitates easy access, but it also comes from other sources.

3) (ISC)2 Magazine

Then: DISSATISFIED Now: VERY DISSATISFIED

While the magazine includes both useful information and propaganda, what I find annoying is that the quiz at the end of it covers both items --- you should know about the (IS)2 achievements, events, etc. to be worthy of earning CPEs...

4) Free Courses from (ISC)2 Learning

Then: SATISFIED Now: DISSATISFIED

I appreciated this at the start mainly because it was free. But as I went on I spotted inconsistencies that got me really confused, among other issues, which I reported in the survey, so I assume they'll attend to these. I mentioned this in the post about the GDPR course.

5) (ISC)2 website

Then: OK Now: DISSATISFIED

At the time that I joined, the website didn't look too impressive, but it worked fine, which was good enough for me. And then, when (ISC)2 recently decided to 'revamp' it --- we all saw that that looks aren't everything.

6) (ISC)2 Support

Then: VERY SATISFIED Now: DISSATISFIED

At the start, I thought the support couldn’t get any better, given that I’d always get a prompt response with all details of my query answered, and it would all be over without any need to follow-up. I initially thought that I'd be able to rely on the info that came from them --- but that changed when one of the moderators explained that we can't rely on Support to confirm if activities are eligible for earning CPEs.

7) (ISC)2 Community

Then: DISSATISFIED Now: DISSATISFIED

I don’t need to say anything here. Just do a search using ‘Badges,’ ‘ AI,’ ‘ Moderation’ or ‘Robots’ --- and you can form an opinion…

(Those keen on expressing their views can also participate in this --- stating VERY SATISFIED, SATISFIED, OK, DISSATISFIED, VERY DISSATISFIED... )

To summarize, the new AMF policy will be appreciated by those holding multiple (ISC)2 certifications & won't be of much concern to those whose organizations bear the AMF cost --- but others will feel the pinch...

Re: Your new annual membership Fee is now $125! How do you feel about that?

François — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 09:32:10 GMT

I guess the plan is to push people to hold more cert to try to recoup value in the new price.

This is dubious to say the least, not to forget that for me to even consider this option, I should be able to pass an ISC2 exam in my country (Belgium). There isn't even a test center anymore.