Department of Defense Directive 8570 Update

The Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 8570.01-M is a new requirement by the DoD to have fully trained Information Assurance (IA) workers. Also known as the Information Assurance Workforce Improvement Program, the directive requires all IA workers to have a certain level of IT training. The most common courses pertaining to the directive are CompTIA’s Security+, Network+, A+ and Cisco’s Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP).

The demand for IT training is rising because so many people are affected. The DoD has already required that 40% of the IA workforce must be fully certified by now, and requires 100% of workers to be certified within the next two and a half years. So in addition to all current employees of the Department of Defense’s IA, any prospective employee will definitely need to become certified beforehand. The main requirement for prospective employees is A+ and Network+, so these two courses are very popular right now. In some cases, Security+ is also a basic requirement.

CompTIA’s adoption of the American National Standards Institute forced the company to update several of its courses. The main chance is to Security+, which, starting in 2008, now has two more sections of material for the course and exam. Many of the IA workers for the DoD already were Security+ certified, so it was imperative for CompTIA to offer some sort of program to update one’s certification. So now people can take the Security+ 2008 Bridge Exam that updates their certification to the current standards of the Department of Defense and its contractors.