CompTIA Cloud+ CV0-003 – CompTIA Resources

1. CompTIA Certification

I’m over here at the CompTIA certification web page. Now CompTIA has, as you’re likely aware, a fair number of certifications available for you to test and validate your knowledge and skill set. Of course, the question now is determining what level of service certification, what type of certification, and what areas of specialization are required. So CompTIA has its core certifications. These are the re certifications. Then you have infrastructure, which is more focused on specific areas. You have both cyber security and what is considered additional professional. So if you go to the cloud plus, you click here for details, and it takes you to the web page. But if I go back here, I did want to show you a few other resources here. Make sure you watch the video. It goes through a good little overview to determine where you are and what you have to do. But if you go over here to “Four Steps to Certification,” they have what’s called the “career roadmap.” And this career roadmap again goes through the different certifications. And what I like is that it does identify other certifications. So it’s not just CompTIA certificates. So, for example, are you curious what might be comparable to CISP and CompTIA? Well, that would be the CISP, pretty much.

So you go over here, find out about intermediaries, and then if you just want to look at specific providers, you can do that. CompTIA has done a really good job at making this easy to sort out around certain areas that you’re looking at. And then if you go over here to Advanced again, these are certifications that are considered advanced CISP. You have a Cisco certification. Certified? certified design professional. That’s a tongue-twister for me. Network Certified, Professional, Security, and so on. I won’t read them all to you. If you’re going into the IT security world, both ESA and CSA are definitely well recognized in ISC as well. Navigate to Career Opportunities. So let’s say you are more focused on network and, say, cloud technologies. Again, you go over here, and it will show you certifications that you could use to get to different areas in your areas of focus, I guess is what I want to say. Now there is a roadmap here that you could download and if you click on it, you see that they have what’s called an It certification roadmap.

This is actually a pretty good, useful tool because it visually lays it out for you, whereas the website is more interactive and difficult to put together. This sort of does some of the work for you. So again, this is downloadable at the links; feel free to take a look at it as well. And lastly, if we go over here, you can see that they’ve got different certificates from all kinds of vendors. And you come over here to figure out which certification is best for me. This information includes certification, experience, and job roles. So you can see that CompTIA has really spent some time trying to develop areas that you can sort of identify as areas of interest, focus areas, whatever. They even have a quiz here. I’ve not taken a quiz. I’m sort of beyond that at this point in my life. But, once again, if that’s something you’re interested in, go ahead and take the quiz to see how it turns out. So with that said, let’s proceed on to the next module.

2. New!–CompTIA Stackable Certifications

CompTIA.Stackable certifications. This is a new addition to CompTIA certifications. Now, I really like this because what it does is not only when you pass, for example, your Network Plus, your Cloud Plus, your CSA, or whatever the certification is, and you already have another certification, but if it meets that career pathway requirement, you literally get another certification on top of that. This is referred to as stackable certification. This demonstrates that you have excellent credentials in a specific field. Let’s go ahead and take a quick look at these.

You have three pathways. You have a specialist, a professional, and an expert. So it appears that you have this divided into two sections right now. and this is brand new. This is just something that was released in December. And I remember getting an email from CompTIA saying, “Congratulations! Here is your CompTIA Stackable certification.” And I was a little surprised because I didn’t remember taking this because basically it said I was, for example, a cloud administration professional (or I got a couple of them), but for example, the email said I was like a CCAP, and I’m like, “What the heck is that?” That’s totally new. But anyways, after researching something brand new, they just released a great opportunity for you to go out and say, “Get your Network Plus and Cloud Plus,” and get another certification to add to your LinkedIn profile. Now they have, essentially, two pathways, essentially.

One is the infrastructure pathway, and the other is cybersecurity. If you get Security Plus and Cloud Plus with Cyber Security, you will become a CompTIA secure cloud professional. Or if you get Security Plus and CSA, so on and so forth, or if you get all three, you are at the expert level, for example, and they have three different levels. So this is actually pretty cool. This is a new feature. So again, if you go out and take two certifications and those two certifications match up to one of the career pathway levels, you will get an additional certification out of this. No action is needed; it automatically comes from the CompTIA certification system, and you can go over to the certmetrics site and download the certificate that way as well. “With that,” said Stackable. Certifications.

3. Finding Continuing Educations Credits

So you want to renew your CompTIA certification. Well, to do that, you need to attain what are called continuing education units, or credits. So for CompTIA Cloud Plus, you want to go over here. It says you need CEUs. Now to earn the credits. First, you probably should read this because there are many different ways to earn credits. Go to this page for more information on CE. It walks you through the process. Now you have many different options. Consider cloud plus, for example. Now, I don’t believe Cloud Plus is supported by CertMaster, but if you have something like Security Plus or something, this might be a quick way for you to do it. There is a cost to using the CertMaster.

For example, Network Plus and Security Plus cost $175, which is quite expensive for four to six hours. I think you should keep going because it’s just repetitive content. But then again, if you don’t have other things to submit, then that might work. But if you go back here, let’s say, for example, you want to submit credits, there are many different ways you get to basically do what is called an assessment. Let’s say, for example, you want to find out what you could do to earn credits. So go ahead and get started here. Select the different choices that are here. It’s called the CEU assessment. So if you earn a non-CompTIA certification, you go over here, select yes, and it basically asks you to submit the certificate that you completed. the certificates and other information. Go to the next step. I want to renew CASP, for example, or in this case, let’s submit Cloud Plus.

I go next, and it says “view the qualifying industry certification.” So I go over here, and it gives me the list of certifications that are valid to go towards the Cloud Plus renewal. And there’s a fair number; many vendors are supported here. So the good part is, if you’re a cloud architect or security architect now, chances are your certification will give you so many credits. And chances are, just by getting that certificate, you can pretty much remove any other credit requirements as well. So 50 credits is pretty generous. So if you go over here, for example, why is that? Hold on, let me just scroll back. I just wanted to give you another example. Okay, so let’s say, for example, that you completed a training course or attended a conference. So if you select, like, “I attended a conference,” go to Next Steps. Did you complete this within your cycle? Yes, I did. It says, “Did you have a detailed description?” Do you have a certificate of completion or some kind of email saying you went to the conference? Let’s say I’m going to renew Cloud Plus. I follow the steps, and it says yes, 50% of the activity is pertinent to the Cloud Plus exam objectives. And here are the objectives here: Go to the next step. And it says that based on that, you can go ahead and submit that email or certificate of completion to CompTIA. So that’s pretty great to get that done. So it’s only 50%, I believe, of the credit. So you still need to do something else to make up for the other 25 credits, for example. So with that said, renewing CEUs is not a big deal. It’s fairly straightforward and easy to do. You just need to submit the proper paperwork to get it done.

4. CompTIA Subject Matter Experts

Well, folks, I wanted to make sure that you were aware of a great opportunity for those that would like to help out and participate in creating the next revision or the next new exam for CompTIA. And so you can become what’s called a “subject matter expert.” I’ve now had the opportunity to take eight and two exams, the Cloud Essential and the Cloud Plus, respectively, the first revision of the Cloud Plus. To do that, there’s a process. But again, if you’re really good at what you do and you want to spend a week in Chicago, hopefully not in January or something, it’s a great opportunity to meet a lot of your peers to do that. Now, the first step in becoming an SME is to look for workshops that are currently taking place. Now, before we go through some of this quickly, I just wanted to show you. So, if you go down here to subject matter experts, but, once again, I had a fantastic experience. So let me share with you how you can get involved and participate. Now you do get paid for this, which is a good thing. It’s not a whole lot of money, but it’s a nice amount of money, especially if your company is paying you to be there. So it could be a good opportunity. So you should come over here to the upcoming SME workshops. And as you can see, today is September 21.

So I’m doing this on September 21, and this is what’s available right now. So you select any of these that may be of interest. And when you do check, whether it’s a week from now or six months from now, you’ll notice that there will most likely be different workshops. So they have a new exam,  which is actually sort of interesting. It’s called a penetration tester. That will be a new one, followed by a plus, as well as the fundamentals of cloud plus, cut score workshops, and network plus. So these are workshops. So let’s say you want to become part of, say, the Cloud Plus Cut workshop. What you would do is just go over here and read the requirements. And this means that if you do participate, you will receive up to $2,000 for the week. Now, most of the workshops are going to last four to five days, I believe. Most are five days, but some are a little shorter. It depends on what they set up. But again, that’s an extra $2,000, especially if your company is going to pay for you to be there. Because there aren’t that many companies anymore, a few do try to get their employees who are in the industry or working hard for them to take advantage of opportunities like this to add to their experience and resume, for example. And it’s a great event. They take care of pretty much everything, including travel. So you go over here and apply to be an SMA, and you just fill out your name and up to two programmes that you want to be a part of, and then you just fill out simple questions, and then you upload your resume. If you do apply, hopefully you do get chosen for the exam and get to participate. Let me know. I’m always excited to network with other CompTIA SMBs as well.