Understanding CompTIA CEUs: How to renew your Network+ | Guest Tommy Gober

[00:00:00] Chris Sienko: Today on Cyberwork Hacks, InfoSec Bootcamp instructor Tommy Gober is talking about CompTIA's Network Plus certification and the best ways to earn continuing education credits to keep your NetPlus certification up to date. 

[00:00:11] Tommy Gober: any sort of vendor that may come to your, uh, organization to showcase some new technology, some conference that you've attended, whether it's specifically Network focused, or if it's cloud or security focused, it's all networking. And so you can use all of those, um, just ways to document, to prove that you are engaged, uh, in the industry

[00:00:36] Chris Sienko: Tommy offers tips and hacks for creating, executing, and documenting projects that will earn you CEUs, 

[00:00:42] Tommy Gober: I wonder what it's going to be like to set up a new firewall, to, uh, set up a new, uh, wireless network just for my IOT devices at home for all those internet of things devices that you've got. All of those things can be documented and captured and, uh, are available for credit.

[00:00:58] Chris Sienko: and reminds us that learning is a cascading process, and if you've got quite a few certs from CompTIA that need renewing, it might just be time to escalate things one level. 

[00:01:06] Tommy Gober: Step up certification is one of the things that that CompTIA does to allow you to, uh, renew your certification. So that's, that's a way that I, I like to do that. And just to stay, um, stay in tune with what the new changes are in the field.

[00:01:24] Chris Sienko: For Well, I know what that means. Keep it right here for today's cyber work hack. 

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welcome to a new episode of cyberwork hacks. The purpose of this spinoff of our popular cyberwork podcast is to take a single fundamental question and give you a quick, clear, and actionable solution to that problem or new insights into how to utilize InfoSec products and training. To achieve your work and career goals.

So today's guest, Tommy Gober is an InfoSec instructor, and he is our InfoSec bootcamp instructor for several of Coptia's essential entry level certifications. And one of them is the Network If you've been watching Hacks for the last couple of weeks, we've been talking all things NetPlus, and we're going to wrap it up here with a part four.

Today's Cyborg Hack. Tommy is going to walk us through CompTIA's continuing education unit requirements and how to accrue CEUs to renew your Network Plus certification. So thank you for joining me today, Tommy.

[00:03:08] Tommy Gober: Good to see you again.

[00:03:09] Chris Sienko: Absolutely. So Tommy, let's start with the cert renewal process. So why does, why does CompTIA require cert holders to pursue additional learning in order to keep their cert current?

[00:03:20] Tommy Gober: Well, uh, this is something that's come around. It's been around for, to say like, I think it started in like 2010, um, been around for quite a while. And think what shaped it, and this is, um, you know, I was somewhat of a, uh, I was in the industry at the time. And so I, there was this perception that people with certifications, well, they had the knowledge, but they didn't have the skills. someone might have a certification from five, eight, 10 years prior. And they just didn't really know the content at all because the content had moved on from that, uh, from that moment. so what CompTIA did was they created this, uh, continuing education structure where every three years you have to re up, renew your certification. There's a few different ways to do that, but that's really what kind of drove that was you need to prove that you're staying current, you can't just Pass it and then rest on your laurels. You have to stay, stay engaged with the industry. Otherwise it will expire and you'll have to come back and retest again in the future.

[00:04:31] Chris Sienko: Yeah, when we think of, you know, different types of security professionals or I. T. Professionals or, uh, network admins, you have a couple of different sort of archetypes in your head. You have the person who's, who's always on top of it and trying new things and, you know, breaking out the new software and, and, and, and breaking it, putting it back together.

And then the person that's just been there for 30 years and they just keep doing the same thing and they push this button to get here and so forth. And so I guess, uh, CompTIA is trying to sort of discourage, uh, The latter while encouraging the former because it just it makes a more robust Uh, cybersecurity ecosystem, I suppose.

Yeah. So, uh, with the security plus and other security focus certifications, I feel like the idea of visualizing what CEU credits look like in that situation are maybe a little more intuitive. Like you're writing a blog about a CTF you solved, or you're, you're documenting a class you took or a lecture, or you're, you know, you're basically showing your work as they used to say in math class and so forth.

Um, and I'm wondering if there's a similar. Sort of path for network plus CEUs. I mean, I don't feel like you solve as, maybe you solve as many problems. I prove me wrong here, but like, do you, what, what, what sorts of things do you document or do to make sure that you're earning your CEUs for a network plus certification?

[00:05:50] Tommy Gober: Great question. When the, uh, in the industry, when you're a practitioner, um, when you're working in the networking space and with, uh, with security, all of those things that you just mentioned of, um, you know, engaging with a CTF and writing a blog post about that, sharing what you've did with this or with that. Um, it's all the same sorts of activities, uh, because so much of security is of cybersecurity is. Involved with network so much of networking is involved with cybersecurity. Uh, the two go hand in hand It's really hard to to draw that line. It's kind of that. Um, yeah, have you ever heard? It's called the fallacy of the beard where you're like at what point does uh, you know, what point does facial hair? Stop becoming stubble and starts that's becomes a beard like I know it when I see it You've maybe you've heard that one. It's the same thing with networking and security. They go hand in hand It's hard to have one without having the other and so this uh, the the process of um of Working in the, uh, in the industry, um, is going to be something that you can document for continuing education. 

any sort of vendor that may come to your, uh, organization to showcase some new technology, some conference that you've attended, whether it's specifically Network focused, or if it's cloud or security focused, it's all networking. And so you can use all of those, um, just ways to document, to prove that you are engaged, uh, in the industry, 

setting up a home lab. Um, you know, before we hit record, we were talking about raspberry pie little and making a home lab computer. And so just setting that up, if, if your goal is to do. Some sort of, you know, hacker tinkering kind of set up, you're going to be tinkering with the networking. So that applies as well. Um, so all of these things can be done, um, taking on some sort of a project.

Like 

I wonder what it's going to be like to set up a new firewall, to, uh, set up a new, uh, wireless network just for my IOT devices at home for all those internet of things devices that you've got. All of those things can be documented and captured and, uh, are available for credit.

[00:08:08] Chris Sienko: That's great. Yeah. I hadn't thought of the idea of rather than solving a problem that's in the world, like a certain type of malware or a certain type of intrusion, you make it, you make a problem and then you solve it.

[00:08:19] Tommy Gober: That's the way I learned. I

[00:08:20] Chris Sienko: And well, that's.

[00:08:21] Tommy Gober: a project out there and I just go for it.

[00:08:23] Chris Sienko: Yeah. And that's real, that's real smart too, because it, it takes you out of your, your sort of comfort area.

And it, you know, it also sort of, it, it does literally what it's supposed to do. It increases your thinking about what a network is because you're, you're asking yourself to like, think beyond, uh, what you learned in class. So, um, what advice do you have to make sure that you're not leaving the process of earning CEUs until the last minute before your cert expires?

Cause I know just about anything, you know, Exams do next week. Oh, I haven't started studying or my dioramas do or whatever. So can professionals incorporate CEU earning behaviors into their day to day operations?

[00:08:57] Tommy Gober: yes, just staying, uh, staying reminded that you have got these. If you're currently a CompTIA, uh, certification holder, this is your reminder, you need to be logging. So here we go. It's just, uh, that conference that you went to this year, that, um, that event that you went to last year, documenting all that you have three years attain. Uh, the correct number of, uh, continuing education units, uh, CEUs, and then CompTIA will want you to pay. Um, to have those CEUs evaluated, and then they're going to, uh, that would then renew your certification, but keeping track of all that, honestly, Chris is not very fun. It's not, it's not thrilling to, you know, keep growing this little packet you've got down in your desk drawer that you keep all of your stuff, you know, that keep adding in. Uh, these, uh, signature sheets that your supervisor signs off whenever you've completed some new project or, uh, having that vendor just like, Oh yeah, I'm here from, you know, such and such company signing off on that. It's not terribly fun. I I'm a learning junkie. love and the way that, uh, that I really, um, enjoy renewing my certifications.

This sounds weird and maybe why I'm an instructor. I like taking certifications. I like taking other certifications that I like leveling up my understanding and so reaching for that next 

Step up certification is one of the things that that CompTIA does to allow you to, uh, renew your certification. So that's, that's a way that I, I like to do that. And just to stay, um, stay in tune with what the new changes are in the field.

[00:10:49] Chris Sienko: Right?

[00:10:50] Tommy Gober: a new CompTIA certification comes out, I like to take it and make sure that I'm checking off, uh, those boxes that they've got, but also it renews my. My prior existing certifications, and it helps kind of stretch my brain as I'm learning that

[00:11:04] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:11:04] Tommy Gober: I'm putting myself out there where there's stuff that I may not know. And so I'm going to tackle that on that. So. You can, you know, keeping documenting, you know, uh, quarterly, you know, annually, making sure that you've got a certain number of credit hours, uh, that you're from that year. That's going to be helpful in that.

[00:11:25] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I guess that's, that's a, that's like sort of a common thing. If you learn the next level up, you, You sort of get like an auto autocomplete of the certifications beneath it. Is that right? Something like that.

[00:11:35] Tommy Gober: And, and I also, I'm going to share my screen over here.

[00:11:38] Chris Sienko: Yeah, please. 

[00:11:39] Tommy Gober: Um, there is, This is from the CompTIA website. If you go to CompTIA. org, you can search for this. And, uh, this tells you how many continuing education units, CEUs you need for the various CompTIA certifications. Um, right off the beginning, you need 20, uh, hour, 20 CEUs, uh, uh, 20 education CEU credits to renew your A plus, um, or if you went for like the data plus, after A plus, if you went to network plus. You're going to need 30 over a three year period. So roughly 10 credits per year. Once you move up into security plus, then you're going to be meeting 50 per year. and as you keep pushing the envelope higher, when you, uh,

[00:12:26] Chris Sienko: 50 per, per three year.

[00:12:28] Tommy Gober: yeah, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Every

[00:12:29] Chris Sienko: Okay. So I'll make sure.

[00:12:30] Tommy Gober: Yeah, the math doesn't work out.

[00:12:32] Chris Sienko: Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah.

[00:12:33] Tommy Gober: So the, the pen test, uh, CYSA each needs 60. And then, uh, finally up at the very, um,

[00:12:40] Chris Sienko: Oh yeah. Yeah,

[00:12:41] Tommy Gober: or security X. Um, we've got 75, uh, credits, uh, every three years. And so these are the, the number of, uh, CEUs that you need. On this page down below, it says that, um, you need to, uh, how much do you need all of this and you can't do all of your. So you mentioned like blog posts, uh, earlier, you can't just write a bunch of blog posts and have that count for

[00:13:06] Chris Sienko: right.

[00:13:07] Tommy Gober: And

[00:13:08] Chris Sienko: It's gotta be varied.

[00:13:09] Tommy Gober: was that,

[00:13:10] Chris Sienko: It's gotta be varied.

[00:13:11] Tommy Gober: yeah, you've got to vary it. You got to, you know, come up with some variety in there. And so a blog post can help for a certain of that, but then some training can also account for some of that. Um, another way is to get non comp TIA industry certs. Those can

[00:13:27] Chris Sienko: Hmm.

[00:13:27] Tommy Gober: that's, that's surprising for a lot of folks.

[00:13:29] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:13:31] Tommy Gober: You know, you're, you're here in the CompTIA stack, but maybe for work, you're doing an AWS or a Cisco certification. you take those after you have your CompTIA certification, that can then count back for your CompTIA renewal as part of that, it's not going to auto renew it, but it will count for the, some of those CEU credits. Um, always like the, you know, like you said, the blog post, I always kind of laugh and joke around with, uh, writing a book,

[00:14:00] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:14:00] Tommy Gober: writing a book does not completely cover,

[00:14:03] Chris Sienko: Wow.

[00:14:04] Tommy Gober: I'm just like,

[00:14:05] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:06] Tommy Gober: but that's part of the, a part of, uh, the, the stuff that they've got on here. And of course, work related experiences, like documenting, having your supervisor sign off on you, um, taking part in some, uh, related activity. Very, very helpful. like I said, the other way you can do this is to, um, renew with a higher level certification. So if you have a plus a data data sys, um, any of those, those are just kind of standing on their own, but when you pass network plus, it will renew your a plus automatically, like

[00:14:39] Chris Sienko: Wow.

[00:14:39] Tommy Gober: further work needed. Just, it's just automatically going to do that.

[00:14:43] Chris Sienko: Marvelous.

[00:14:44] Tommy Gober: When you push the envelope ahead and you get on with security plus, it renews both your network and a plus. And so there's kind of this cascading effect with it. I really, really

[00:14:52] Chris Sienko: Smart.

[00:14:53] Tommy Gober: Um, if you go with, uh, you know, if we're talking about network plus when, if you go with Linux plus that's another way renew your a plus when you go with cloud cloud can renew both a plus and Linux, or if it's a new one, it does a plus net plus, and Linux plus,

[00:15:10] Chris Sienko: Wow.

[00:15:11] Tommy Gober: you know, just keep pushing yourself. Ahead you're learning a little bit more then I mentioned cysa and pentest. Those are In the CompTIA sphere, they're, they're kind of on the same footing. They each renew security plus network and a plus, but they also kind of cross renew one another. So pen test renews, CYSA, CYSA renews pen test. And so they kind of do each other and the ones down below. And then lastly, CASP or what's been rebranded as a security X as part of the expert series from CompTIA. It renews. All of those that I just mentioned, uh, CYSA pen test security net plus and a plus all in there. That's a fun way to do this is just keep learning more, keep growing your understanding and it just naturally renews content so that you finally get to the point where I'm going to renew all of these certifications.

[00:16:07] Chris Sienko: Yeah,

[00:16:08] Tommy Gober: Just by renewing this one,

[00:16:10] Chris Sienko: yep.

[00:16:11] Tommy Gober: it makes it quite easy, uh, to do that as well.

[00:16:15] Chris Sienko: Yeah, that's, that's smart too, because it's not, it's not the sort of, um, stereotype of the, of the cert collector, because you're not just grabbing things to grab things, like each of these really does. And, you know, sort of combine on the, you know, if you're getting cast plus, yeah, of course, you know, a plus, of course, you know, like, you know, that's like, that's like a Hercules level certification.

So, uh, that's very smart. And, and I think really, really good advice here. So, uh, well, Tommy Gober, thank you for, for walking us through this. This is one of the questions that, uh, so many of our students ask. And so I'm really glad that you were able to sort of lay it out so plainly.

[00:16:48] Tommy Gober: Yeah. And I love it. And we also mentioned here, Chris too, uh, don't put it off as kind of one of my parting thoughts. And if you are already one of, uh, Infosecs. Uh, bootcamp participants, you get 90 days access to all the material, um, on our InfoSec skills page, including some of those CEU videos. So if you are hard pressed, if you have put it off, can get a one stop shop just by going to InfoSec skills and getting the, getting access to it that way, and you're going to be able to. You know, breeze through all the material to make sure that you're staying current on your

[00:17:20] Chris Sienko: Fabulous.

[00:17:21] Tommy Gober: verifications.

[00:17:22] Chris Sienko: Love that. Well, Tommy Gober, thank you again for, for joining me today. This has been awesome.

[00:17:25] Tommy Gober: Thanks, Chris.

[00:17:26] Chris Sienko: Uh, thank you all for watching, uh, this cyber work hack. If you enjoyed it, share it with your friends, share it with your colleagues, share it in forums, social media accounts, anywhere you like. But best of all, tell one person, word of mouth recommendation is how shows like this grow their audience, uh, and keep robust and make sure to subscribe to our podcast feed and our YouTube page.

You can type in cyber work and info sec in any of them. And we'll be right there. You recognize the color scheme. So if you have any topics you want us to cover, drop them in the comments and we'll be happy to address them. Uh, this is Chris Senko and Tabby Gobert wishing you happy learning. See you next time.