Good skills
CompTIA calls itself the leading provider of vendor-neutral skills certification for IT professionals. Its flagship certification - CompTIA A+ - is designed to be a general purpose qualification for tech support workers.
Today, it announced an update to A+ to reflect changing job requirements, but hasn't specified what's new and what has been dropped. A+ was last refreshed in 2006 and you can access details of both the old and new certifications here.
"The new exams are streamlined, yet still deliver a comprehensive measurement of the core skills and knowledge required of all entry-level IT professionals regardless of their job role or responsibility," said Terry Erdle, senior VP of skills development at CompTIA.
Additionally, CompTIA Security Trustmark, a measure of IT security best practice that CompTIA hopes will be viewed as a new independent kitemark for security expertise, is expected to make an appearance in the UK before the end of the year, having already been launched in the US.
"Anything that helps businesses to benchmark their own security credentials and enables customers to gauge their suppliers' levels of security is a positive step in creating a more secure business environment," said Greg Day, EMEA Security Analyst at McAfee, a member company of CompTIA. "An international and industry accepted kitemark will increase confidence and enable businesses."
Update - 14:00 11 August 2009: We received some more details from CompTIA regarding the new A+, which consists of two exams:
Essentials exam
- Streamlined the hardware sections
- Introduced a Troubleshooting, Repair & Maintenance component
Practical Applications exam
- Streamlined the hardware sections
- Increased the focus on Operating Systems, Networking, Security
