CompTIA – Digital IT News

Students Receive Extended Digital Learning with CompTIA and TestOut

Taylor Graham — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 22:09:05 +0000

CompTIA announced the strategic acquisition of TestOut, providing comprehensive delivery solutions for training, courseware, online labs, performance-based exams and more. Through this acquisition, two mission-driven organizations join forces to extend their best-in-class learning solutions, industry-recognized certifications and career accelerators to students, professionals and academic institutions the world over.

Utah-based TestOut Corporation, launched in 1991, has helped millions of individuals acquire the skills they need to progress in their education and careers. TestOut’s full feature learning platform, LabSim, enables students to access a broad range of hands-on learning content that builds “career-ready IT skills” while providing educators with the tools they need to help these students succeed.

“TestOut has an amazing team of dedicated professionals driven by a customer-first mindset,” said Todd Thibodeaux, CompTIA president and CEO. “They’ve built a great company, developing world-class learning solutions for a broad array of students and instructors. The combination of our two companies will greatly accelerate CompTIA’s training and certification offerings into more and more tech and IT job roles.”

TestOut CEO Noel Vallejo believes the two companies are well aligned.

“Over the past 10 years, I have often thought that if I were going to sell TestOut, CompTIA would be at the top of my list of potential buyers,” Vallejo said. “We fit well together. Both organizations are committed to helping individuals build a better life for themselves through technology education and certification.”

Employer hiring activity for technology and digital job roles reached an all-time high in 2022 with over four million employer job postings.Over the next decade, projections indicate demand for tech workers will grow at twice the rate of the overall labor force. In areas such as cybersecurity, data, cloud infrastructure and software development growth rates are even higher, while momentum continues to build for digital literacy across all occupation categories.

“There is a critical economic need to break the cycle of persistent talent shortages, and an equally critical need to expand opportunity and diversity in the tech workforce,” Thibodeaux said. “CompTIA and TestOut share a passion and commitment to unlocking the potential of every student, instructor, career changer or tech professional reaching for the next rung.”

For more information on CompTIA and TestOut, visit our websites here.

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SMBs Research Revealed a Return to a Growth Mindset by CompTIA

Taylor Graham — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 18:54:22 +0000

America’s small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are shifting their focus away from maintaining the status quo to implementing new innovations and hiring skilled tech workers, according to new research by CompTIA.

The return to a growth mindset is reflected in both SMBs’ positive outlook on business prospects and their technology investment plans, detailed in CompTIA’s “SMB Tech Buying Trends,” a survey completed by the nonprofit association for the IT industry and workforce, of 650 U.S. companies with fewer than 250 employees.

“After two-plus years of being on the defensive simply trying to stay in business, SMBs are back to strategic, revenue-generating thinking centered on innovation, hiring additional tech staff and investing more in training and certifications,” said Carolyn April, senior director, industry analysis, at CompTIA.

Hiring skilled workers to drive strategic goals is cited as a top objective by 39% of respondents, up from 25% in 2021. Similarly, 38% of SMBs seek to innovate and implement new ideas and innovations, compared to 26% last year. These more aggressive goals align with generally positive attitudes about the current state of business.

Eight in 10 SMBs express positive sentiments about the health of their business, with 51% holding steady and 30% thriving. They’re also generally positive about the outlook for the next 12 months. A net 53% are very or somewhat optimistic about prospects for their industry, and even more bullish about their own companies, with a net 60% expressing optimism.

“These positive feelings are tempered by concerns about inflation, recession, supply chain challenges and other macroeconomic issues,” April said. “But the attitude of many SMBs appears to be that while you can’t control world events, you can plan to better withstand them; by building cash reserves, developing a system of back-up suppliers for goods and services and continuing with marketing and innovation efforts.”

Just over half of SMBs (52%) report a technology spending level appropriate for their business objectives, while the remaining 48% fall into the camps of believing spending is too low or too high for various reasons. Annual spending on technology falls within the range of $10,000 to $250,000 for two-thirds of SMBs.

“The gap between spending reality and real spending need is a perennial issue for SMBs, who are constantly managing resource allocation,” April noted. “But if the strategic mindset about business goals and the role technology plays in attaining them continues apace as it is now, business owners will hopefully realize that committing to further investments will be key for success and help buttress them against another unexpected body blow.”

CompTIA’s “SMB Tech Buying Trends” is based on an August 2022 survey of technology and business professionals from 650 SMBs in the U.S. For more analysis of the results, visit the CompTIA Blog.

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Tech Hiring Off to a Hot Start for the Year, According to CompTIA

Taylor Graham — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 04:09:32 +0000

Strong tech hiring momentum continued into January, according to analysis of the latest labor market data by The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), the non-profit association for advancing the information technology (IT) industry and its workforce.

Tech-related hiring contributed to the strong national growth of 467,000 jobs in January, as reported in the “Employment Situation” report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (#JobsReport).

Technology companies increased employment by 24,300 workers in January, the 14^th consecutive month of tech employment growth at the industry level. IT occupations throughout the economy increased by 178,000¹, lowering the unemployment rate for tech occupations to 1.7% in January, down from 2% in December.

“By all accounts this was an exceptionally strong start to the year for tech employment,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “The arms race in recruiting and retaining tech talent undoubtedly challenges employers in direct and indirect ways.”

Employer job postings for technology positions reached nearly 340,000 last month, spanning industry sector, geographic location and skillsets. The January rate of tech job postings continues to track above the 12-month average by approximately 11%.²

Tech job postings surpassed 10,000 openings in eight metropolitan areas across the country, from New York (19,265) to Seattle (10,047). The data also reveals that employment opportunities in technology aren’t limited to the biggest cities. Lansing, Mich., ranked third nationally among all metro markets in the month-over-month increase in tech job postings. Michigan saw the largest jump in job postings among the states, with a total of 10,559 in January, an increase of more than 2,100 from December.

“Employer job posting analysis confirms the interconnected nature of technical skills across cloud infrastructure, applications, data and cybersecurity, as well as the critical importance of soft skills, project management skills and business acumen,” said Herbert.

Professional, scientific and technical services (56,860), finance and insurance (38,820), manufacturing (31,379), information (16,796) and retail trade (11,687) led the list of industries with tech job postings in January.

More than half of January’s job gains within the tech sector occurred in the IT services and custom software development category (+14,800), an important indicator of business activity, especially among small and medium-sized companies. Tech firms also added workers in data processing, hosting and related services (+7,500), other information services, including search engines (+3,100) and computer and electronic products manufacturing (+2,000). Only the telecommunications employment category was in negative territory (-3,100).

Learn more about CompTIA or view The “CompTIA Tech Jobs Report” here.

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¹ Monthly occupation-level data reporting from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be subject to higher levels of variance and volatility.
² Employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and job posting data from EMSI Burning Glass may be subject to backward revisions.

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CompTIA ISAO Adds Real-time Cybersecurity Threat Analysis and Intelligence Resources from Sophos

Leigh Porter — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 20:10:24 +0000

Advanced cybersecurity threat analysis and intelligence capabilities are now available from the CompTIA Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) through an expanded collaboration with global next-generation cybersecurity leader Sophos and it industry-leading and highly acclaimed threat research lab, SophosLabs.

The announcement of the new cyber capabilities was made today by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce.

CompTIA ISAO members can directly submit suspicious URLs and files through the ISAO’s Cyber Forum to SophosLabs Intelix for rapid analysis to determine if they are known or zero-day cybersecurity threats. SophosLabs Intelix combines petabytes of threat intelligence derived from decades of SophosLabs threat research with Sophos AI tools and techniques, bringing a powerful new source of threat intelligence to the CompTIA ISAO and its managed services provider (MSP), vendor, distributor, and associate members.

“SophosLabs research illustrates how adversaries are constantly changing their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to breach targets, move laterally and carry out ransomware and other attacks,” said Simon Reed, senior vice president, SophosLabs. “The only way to effectively fight modern cybercrime is if we do it together. That’s why Sophos is committed to sharing actionable threat intelligence with the CompTIA community. This new integration gives member organizations advanced abilities to quickly investigate suspicious URLs and files to determine their risk and to understand what happens if they are opened or executed. Powered by machine learning, SophosLabs Intelix predictively convicts never-before-seen threats, and is constantly improving based on the collective input of community intelligence.”

“This is a real differentiator for our members, who can access a powerful analysis resource to identify, classify and prevent threats, further protecting themselves and more importantly, their customers,” said MJ Shoer, senior vice president and executive director of the CompTIA ISAO.

The new integration expands Sophos’ support of the CompTIA ISAO. As a Silver Industry Partner, Sophos has been contributing detailed threat analysis from SophosLabs Uncut to the CompTIA ISAO.

“This is a significant addition to the resources available to our members,” Shoer added. “It is the latest example of the support that industry partners such as Sophos have for the CompTIA ISAO, and the commitment we all have to make the industry more secure.”

The CompTIA ISAO is a community of nearly 1,200 member companies that share best practices, cyber threat intelligence, educational content and more to help address ever-evolving cyber threats. Working closely with public and private cybersecurity agencies and organizations, the CompTIA ISAO is helping its members understand the threat landscape, defend against current and future attacks and raise cybersecurity awareness throughout the global tech industry. For complete details on the CompTIA ISAO and the benefits of membership visit https://www.comptiaisao.org/.

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