Certification Introduction
CAP stands for Certified Authorization Professional. This certification is offered by ISC organization which is the acronym for Information System Security. As the name indicates, CAP is a certified program through which interested candidates develop the technical abilities and skills in the domain of information systems. Thus, it measures the knowledge of the candidates regarding how they maintain and authorize the information systems. This authorization control is mainly utilized for those personnel who are involved or linked with the sensitive and confidential data and computer systems as well as can pose risks to the important documents and security requirements.
The CAP certification mainly targets the personnel belonging to federal government especially of US government including department of defense and state department as well as local and civilian governments and commercial markets which are sensitive towards the national and international security and safety. After completing this certification, the qualified candidates can seek career as the professional certifiers, information system security officers, information owners, systems owners and authorization officials. The CAP exam consists of 125 multiple choice based questions and they have to be answered in three hours and the passing points of 700 are required out of 1000. Moreover, this certification accredited by the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and is in compliance with the ISO/IEC standards.
Related Exams
ISC offers various other different certifications as well for example, Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) which is an advance level and vendor neutral certification offered in the domain of information system security. Such programs help to secure the organizations and their information systems and data from hazardous attacks and data breaches by teaching the credibility, competency and skills to security personnel in the said domain.
Certification Objectives
CAP certification is meant for those IT and security related personnel who want to gain exceptional knowledge and develop skills in the information systems and their security. The objectives of this certification are listed below:
- Develop skills to teach the learners about the security controls and how they can monitor them
- What is information system authorization and how this helps in securing the computer systems and consequently confidential data
- How security controls can be assessed and what are the tools and techniques for this purpose
- How these security controls can be implemented and what is the role of relevant tools and methods for its implementation
- What is risk management framework and what are its particulars and features
- In how many categories the information systems are categorized and on what basis.
In the above given objectives, basically, the CAP exams are divided and it is the responsibility of the candidates to clear exams for each and every domain in order to clear the CAP certification exam.
Certification Information
Re-certification
The CAP certification is valid for a period of three years and after this time period the candidates are required to do the re certification procedure so that they can keep their knowledge and skills up to date as demanded by most job opportunities. For re certification, the candidates are required to maintain the CPE credits to 20 points.
Exam prerequisites
The candidate interested to do this certification is required to have adequate knowledge and skills as well as hands on experience in the IT field generally and particularly in information security policy, database systems development, system administration, information risk management, information assurance and network experience. Moreover, he should also now standard documentation styles such as NIST.
Skills and Benefits
The qualified candidates will learn state of ate art tools and technologies along with the relevant concepts regarding information systems and its security. The successful candidate will be considered a professional who is fully capable to offer his serve in high profile organizations in order to demonstrate his/her knowledge. All organizations either at low scale or high scale require security personnel to improve their security posture and maintain a safe working environment. Thus, these certified people will help positively to improve the security posture of organizations as needed.
What’s next?
After successfully qualifying CAP exam, the organizations can train their security professionals in the relevant disciplines as well or candidates can independently opt for higher level certification. Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) as offered by ISC is another certification for learning advance information security procedures and policies in order to ensure availability, integrity and confidentiality of data.
