Saviynt’s Free Certification Initiative Aims to Boost Cybersecurity Workforce Skills

Key facts:

• Free Certification Initiative: Saviynt is offering free identity security courses and certifications.
• Addressing Skill Gaps: The aim is to help close the global shortage of security professionals.
• Partners: Saviynt says it is working with education and industry partners to widen the program’s reach.
• Broader Implications: Other vendors could follow with their own free training.

What Saviynt is offering

Saviynt, an identity governance and administration company, has made its identity security certification courses free. Newcomers can take them. So can experienced security staff. By dropping the fee, Saviynt hopes more people will train for identity roles, which many security teams struggle to fill for months at a time.

Why identity skills are scarce

Workforce studies estimate the global shortage of security workers in the millions. Identity and access management is one of the harder areas to hire for. Most breaches involve stolen or misused credentials at some point, and the people who manage access policies, privileged accounts and identity platforms are in short supply. Saviynt’s courses focus on that area.

Who can benefit

Removing the cost opens the door to people who would not pay for a vendor certification on their own, including career changers and staff at smaller organizations. The courses are built around current identity platforms and the threats against them, so the material is meant to be usable on the job.

Partnerships

Saviynt says it is working with educational institutions and industry groups to reach more learners. The idea is to pair hands-on practice in a real identity platform with the theory taught in a classroom.

How the industry may respond

Free vendor training is not new. Identity security has simply had less of it than cloud or network security. If Saviynt’s program attracts large numbers, competitors may follow.

Should you sign up?

For anyone considering an identity security career, a free course is a low-risk way to learn the basics and see whether the work fits. Keep in mind that vendor certifications teach one company’s platform. Pair them with vendor-neutral identity knowledge to keep your options open.

For employers, programs like this widen the pool of candidates with hands-on identity skills.

Frank Jones, CISSP

Frank Jones has loved computers from the age of 13. Frank got his hacking career started when he downloaded a war dialing program that he used to detect dial up modems in his hometown of Chicago. Frank Jones now works as a JAVA coder and cyber security researcher.