If you’re looking for a stable career path, you can’t do much better than working for the Federal Government. The benefits, pay, and prestige involved make the competition for federal jobs fierce. How can you get one of these desirable positions?
A great step toward getting a federal job in IT is getting your RMF, or Risk Management Framework, certification. Someone who is certified in RMF is called a CERP, which stands for Certified Expert RMF Professional (CERP).
Learn more about how getting this certification can open up new career paths and opportunities for you.
Become A Security Expert
RMF is used by the government in large part because it is considered the gold standard for online security. Due to the constant and progressing nature of online security risks, the federal government finds it very important to ensure the safety of its technological systems. A breach could mean serious trouble for the entire country, and the government wants to do everything it can to avoid that. For that reason, the RMF has replaced all Department of Defense protocols as the only methodology for federal online security.
Federal Job Opportunities
Although it’s not technically necessary to get RMF certification to apply for a federal IT job, it is the security standard used throughout the federal government in all of its various agencies. That’s why getting RMF certified raises your chances of successfully securing a federal job.
As a part of the Department of Defense, RMF is overseen by the highest levels of government. That’s how seriously the federal government takes RMF and online security. If you get your RMF certification, you can be a part of this exciting, high-energy, and rapidly growing field.
Learn To Handle Sensitive Information
Although the opportunities in federal employment are great, your career possibilities with an RMF certification aren’t at all limited to government jobs. The cornerstone of all RMF training is learning how to handle sensitive information in a secure way. The emphasis is on being proactive, making sure that sites are totally secure before any problems ever come up.
If you’re a private employer, knowing that a potential hire has the training and ability to implement RMF standards means knowing the potential hire can handle just about any security hurdles that come their way. You could be that potential hire.
Understand Management Processes
A critical part of risk management is being able to understand the complex processes that go into systems. Systems are difficult to understand and manage, and that’s why CERP’s are so in demand.
Because security is an aspect of digital life that is ever-changing, being able to implement new plans and ideas requires that security professionals understand the ins and outs of the systems that they are responsible for.
That’s why the RMF teaches six steps for managing security:
Step 1: Categorize the system and the information that is processed, stored and transmitted by the system.
Step 2: Select an initial set of baseline security controls for the system based on the categorization, tailoring and supplementing as needed.
Step 3: Implement the security controls and document how they are deployed.
Step 4: Assess the security controls to determine the extent to which they are meeting the security requirements for the system.
Step 5: Authorize system operation based upon a determination that the level of risk is acceptable.
Step 6: Monitor and assess selected security controls in the system on an ongoing basis and reporting the security state of the system to appropriate organizational officials.
(Source: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Risk-Management/rmf-overview)
As you can see, these steps cover the entirety of system processes. It is this top-to-bottom knowledge of how to secure and oversee such broad operations that make RMF professionals so valuable to the federal government–and to any workplace.
Is Experience Required?
In order to become a CERP, is IT experience required? The answer to this question is no, but experience does help. In order to become a certified RMF professional, you simply need to pass the exam. However, there are two different levels of certification. In order to get “expert” status, you must have at least three years of experience in an information security Assessments and Authorization (A&A) field.
If you don’t have experience in an A&A field, don’t worry–you can still become a CERP. Your qualifications will be as an associate-level professional rather than as an expert. The great thing is that if you complete three years of work experience after passing your certification, your credentials can be raised to the expert status once your work experience is verified.
Get Certified
With 30 Bird’s instructor-led training materials, you can learn everything you need to know to get your RMF certification. We give test-takers their best chance of passing the test the first time they try, which means a lot when so much is at stake. Our eMass learning platform makes our great training easy and accessible. Visit our website for more information: https://www.30bird.com/rmf-emass-training/.
