Hi all,
OK. I haven't been keeping up on the mailing list, so if i am stepping in on anyone's idea here, please just thwap me with a stick. But anyway, this idea has lingered in the back of my head for years now and I never took it seriously until a few days ago.
As everyone knows, there are many different types of certification tests out there. Most mean nothing... the CCNA, CCNP, MCSE, etc. Even A+. Anyone who studies for them can pass them, but it doesn't necessarilly mean that they know their stuff.
A couple of my colleagues are very friendly with top security professionals, such as Dan Geer, Dan Kaminsky, and Mike Schiffman. There are others I know who have connections with people like Mr. McKusick. Of course people here probably know more people than I do, and together, all these people make up a nice array of IT Professionals.
My idea for a while has been to establish an online certification site, not necessarilly GPL or open source, but more of a community project, where certain certification tests could be created and given. Each test would have a core team of five to ten people, made up of professionals like the ones above. For instance, for a general UNIX knowledge test, there would be a group of five or ten *BSD commiters and a security professional or two. General users would be able to come to the website, create a profile, and take exams on certain certs. The exams would be created by the aforementioned core team for that specific certification.
The problem with exams like this is, like I said above, anyone can study and do well on the exam. Thats what makes peer certification different. After a user completes the exam, they must get peer certified. Three peers who have also completed that exam would have to endorse that specific user. So for instance, if I took the exam, and Bob Smith was certified in that specific exam, he could endorse me. And, to make sure that friends did not just certify their friends, you must be endorsed by atleast one member of the core team of that specific certification in order to be able to "endorse" other users.
With those restrictions in place, if you hold a peer certification in Network Security, then that certification will be recognized highly because, in order to obtain that cert, you passed a hard test, and were certified by three individuals who themselves had been endorsed by a well-known top security professional. A certification would be fairly hard to get, but once you got it, it would be worth a lot.
The certification itself would either cost nothing or be very inexpensive. For certificate signing, I was thinking of using some sort of algorithm with a public/private key signing.
I've also considered making an API, so that monster.com, etc. could integrate peer certification into their site and automatically check remote profiles of specific individuals. Jobs could be listed as requiring and/or recommending a peer certification. Since this peer certification thing wouldn't be corporate run, but more community run, it would probably gain more attention.
I recently purchased peercertification.com, and I'm ready to start this this Summer. I've already got some people on a mailing list interested in pursuing this with me, but I wanted the recommendation of some people who I know have had a lot of experience in the field. I'm a type A personality person, and since I started doing computers some 10 years ago, I've been dieing to pursue something that was worthwhile and would do some kind of good. Of course, with my fairly liberal views, I don't want to take jobs away from people in the end because they can't afford nor do they have this certification, but I think if designed the correct way it could end up bettering everyone.
I mean in no way to step on the bsdcertification project. In fact, this site probably wouldn't contain a bsd cert because of that exact reason. I'm more looking to get the opinions of people who are trying to crunch the same kind of numbers that I am right now.
So, in conclusion, if any of you have a second.... What's your overall opinion of this idea?
Thanks!
-Matt _______________________________________________ BSDCert mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/bsdcert
