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  Better Stay On Top of Those CPE's

Ok for a person that is as organized as I am to not stay on top of his CPE's the way I did is strange. Couple that with the fact that I got audited not once, but twice over the last 3 months by both ISACA and ISC2 (I soon after went out and bought a lottery ticket), and I realized I was not as prepared as I should have been. Now it has been hard the last 3 years to get out to training events, meetings, etc., work and travel have prohibited it most of the time.

Never the less after going through both audit processes, I realized I needed an efficient and easy way to track my CPE's, what I had, where, when, how many CPE's were counted and by which organization, ect. This led me to use my excel document matrix skills to put together a tracking matrix for CPE's.

Also I have recently found out from a little bird I know, that both of these organizations are starting to clamp down on bogus CPE's, this I find to be a good thing, it strengthens our certifications and what they mean. But it also means its even now more important to have a system in place to know how many CPE's you have, you need and that you keep the evidence for them.

I also cannot emphasis enough of how IMPORTANT it is TO KNOW exactly what THE CPE POLICY is for the organizations you belong to and the certifications you hold. Do not assume anything, or you will find yourself scrambling during an audit or worse have to retake your test to keep your certification.

There are for example very distinctive differences between say ISACA and ISC2,  where one organization will credit a CPE and the other will not, or where they both may, but one will credit 3 CPE's for something and the other organization may only credit 1 CPE for that same thing. You need to know what these things are so you can A. pursue CPE's you can use for both and B. so you can be more efficient with your time away from work.

After self auditing myself over the last 2-3 weeks, I find out I have30 CPE's (this is over 1 cycle or 3 years) I can use with one and not the other and then 12 for the other I can use for the first one, aaaaaarrrrrrrgh, but you know that's my fault.

So to recap and maybe learn from my experience,  Better Stay On Top of Those CPE's!




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