Keeping Your Certification Current

They say that if you don’t use it, you lose it. So it goes with your CISSP certification, anyway. After you earn your CISSP certification, you must do a few things in order to maintain your hard-won CISSP certification:

Keep your contact information current. As soon as you receive your certification, register on the (ISC)² website and provide your contact information. (ISC)² reminds you about your annual maintenance fee, Board of Directors elections, annual meetings, and events, but only if you maintain your contact info, particularly your e-mail address.

Pay your annual maintenance fee (AMF). You’re required to pay the annual maintenance fee (AMF — currently US $85) each year in order to continue to hold your CISSP certification. You can easily pay the AMF online at the (ISC)² website (www.isc2.org ).

Attending training and conferences to earn CPEs. CPEs are Continuing Professional Education credits. You’re required to continue to earn CPEs through security- and professional-related education opportunities in order to maintain your CISSP certification. During each three-year certification cycle, you have to earn a minimum of 120 CPEs; you must earn at least 20 CPEs each year. (You can’t wait until the last minute in a three-year cycle to earn all of your CPEs.) More information about earning and recording your CPEs is available at www.isc2.org in the document entitled Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Policies and Guidelines.

To submit your CPEs, log in to the (ISC)²website and register your training and other qualified events, one at a time.

You can earn a lot of CPEs by attending conferences and training courses, but you can find many more ways to earn CPEs, such as by providing training, attending chapter meetings, or publishing articles or books.

You must maintain complete records for your CPEs. (ISC)² randomly audits its members to verify that they’ve actually participated in educational events and really earned those CPEs. You don’t want to be caught with your bytes down.