By Jim Hietala, The Open Group, VP of Security
The Open Group today announced the new Open FAIR Certification Program aimed at Risk Analysts, bringing a much-needed professional certification to the market that is focused on the practice of risk analysis. Both the Risk Taxonomy and Risk Analysis standards, standards of The Open Group, constitute the body of knowledge for the certification program, and they advance the risk analysis profession by defining a standard taxonomy for risk, and by describing the process aspects of a rigorous risk analysis.
We believe that this new risk analyst certification program will bring significant value to risk analysts, and to organizations seeking to hire qualified risk analysts. Adoption of these two risk standards from The Open Group will help produce more effective and useful risk analysis. This program clearly represents the growing need in our industry for professionals who understand risk analysis fundamentals. Furthermore, the mature processes and due diligence The Open Group applies to our standards and certification programs will help make organizations comfortable with the ground breaking concepts and methods underlying FAIR. This will also help professionals looking to differentiate themselves by demonstrating the ability to take a “business perspective” on risk.
In order to become certified, Risk Analysts must pass an Open FAIR certification exam. All certification exams are administered through Prometric, Inc. Exam candidates can start the registration process by visiting Prometric’s Open Group Test Sponsor Site www.prometric.com/opengroup. With 4,000 testing centers in its IT channel, Prometric brings Open FAIR Certification to security professionals worldwide. For more details on the exam requirements visit http://www.opengroup.org/certifications/exams.
Training courses will be delivered through an Open Group accredited channel. The accreditation of Open FAIR training courses will be available from November 1st 2013.
Our thanks to all of the members of the risk certification working group who worked tirelessly over the past 15 months to bring this certification program, along with a new risk analysis standard and a revised risk taxonomy standard to the market. Our thanks also to the sponsors of the program, whose support is important to building this program. The Open FAIR program sponsors are Architecting the Enterprise, CXOWARE, SNA, and The Unit.
Lastly, if you are involved in risk analysis, we encourage you to consider becoming Open FAIR certified, and to get involved in the risk analysis program at The Open Group. We have plans to develop an advanced level of Open FAIR certification, and we also see a great deal of best practices guidance that is needed by the industry.
For more information on the Open FAIR certification program visit http://www.opengroup.org/certifications/openfair
You may also wish to attend a webcast scheduled for 7th November, 4pm BST that will provide an overview of the Open FAIR certification program, as well as an overview of the two risk standards. You can register here
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Jim Hietala, CISSP, GSEC, is Vice President, Security for The Open Group, where he manages all security and risk management programs and standards activities, including the Security Forum and the Jericho Forum. He has participated in the development of several industry standards including O-ISM3, O-ESA, Risk Taxonomy Standard, and O-ACEML. He also led the development of compliance and audit guidance for the Cloud Security Alliance v2 publication.
Jim is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. He has participated in the SANS Analyst/Expert program, having written several research white papers and participated in several webcasts for SANS. He has also published numerous articles on information security, risk management, and compliance topics in publications including CSO, The ISSA Journal, Bank Accounting & Finance, Risk Factor, SC Magazine, and others.
An IT security industry veteran, he has held leadership roles at several IT security vendors.
Jim holds a B.S. in Marketing from Southern Illinois University.