New certification program for forensic security responders

Guidance Software announced at RSA Conference 2016 Certified Forensic Security Responder (CFSR) training, a certification fills the skills gap with industry-accepted tools and methodologies for users in forensic analysis, or root cause analysis, which supports the incident response cycle.

Knowledgeable security professionals are in high demand with projected openings outpacing the number of available applicants. In 2014, there were 82,900 information security analysts with that number expected to rise to 97,700 by 2024. More than 209,000 cybersecurity-related jobs are currently unfilled. Certifications like CFSR help new and experienced IT professionals acquire the skills they need to transition into the security industry.

The Guidance certification program will be based on two training courses and a test:

• Incident investigation – This new four-day course will be offered starting in Q2 2016. Those interested in learning how to connect Windows file system artifacts with volatile data to investigate suspicious activity will leave with a solid understand of where activity is logged on a machine.

  No prerequisites required; courses are available in classroom or through remote learning as part of Guidance’s vClass curriculum.

• Host intrusion methodology and investigation – This advanced four-day course was updated to provide students a live environment to practice exploits and examine artifacts as they occur on the systems they infect.

  Students will leave able to distinguish activities in the cyber attack cycle and incident response lifecycle. Students must complete the Incident Investigation or Computer Forensics 2 course as a prerequisite to this course.

Types of roles who would benefit most from this certification are:

• IT specialists who would like to move into the security field with a specialty of forensic analysis.
• Security analysts who would like to move into the forensic analysis specialty.
• DFIR practitioners who are currently doing root cause or forensic analysis.
• Traditional digital investigators who want to transfer from the digital investigations space typically associated with law enforcement or non-security related internal investigation into the security space.

“Organizations are spending an increasing amount of time responding to and recovering from cyber attacks, taxing their limited resources. This trend will continue as the industry grapples with a shortage of trained professionals,” said Patrick Dennis, president and CEO of Guidance Software.

“One of the challenges for those looking to enter this field is that employers often focus their recruitment efforts on experienced digital forensic investigators only, rather than investing into personnel who could mature as part of the group. Guidance’s well-known and proven training and certification programs offer the right tools for people to demonstrate proficiency or update their skills for all phases of the incident response cycle.”