Fraud with courses/certificates
Author: Stefan Waldvogel
Knowledge can be free or expensive
If you start your career you use Google to find courses, certificates and knowledge. You have to know one thing: In Cybersecurity, most technical knowledge is based on open-source products and nearly all topics are on YouTube.
What a course provider does is: Picks useful tools, builds a lab, offer help in a forum/discord and writes a learning guide or create video content. You pay for this extra service and not for the knowledge -> learning is more convenient.
If you see something like: Take this CompTIA A+, Net+ and Sec+ video courses for $1,500 each and get certified!
-> This is a form of scam, because on YouTube you find Prof. Messer and his excellent and outstanding well designed courses for FREE! I did Prof. Messer's courses and passed all of these CompTIA certs in 2 to 3 weeks study time.
On LinkedIn, sometimes you get messages like this:
What a course provider does is: Picks useful tools, builds a lab, offer help in a forum/discord and writes a learning guide or create video content. You pay for this extra service and not for the knowledge -> learning is more convenient.
If you see something like: Take this CompTIA A+, Net+ and Sec+ video courses for $1,500 each and get certified!
-> This is a form of scam, because on YouTube you find Prof. Messer and his excellent and outstanding well designed courses for FREE! I did Prof. Messer's courses and passed all of these CompTIA certs in 2 to 3 weeks study time.
On LinkedIn, sometimes you get messages like this:
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What is wrong with them?
The second message indicates you get a Masters of Business Administration for about $450. Sounds great, right. The reality is, you get a certificate, that is it. If you look closely, you see weird things: I am in the US. The course company is in Canada, and CPD has something to do with the UK.
The message on the left side has more info: You get the fundamentals.... for a "Masters Degree"?? You get proficient in mitigating threats in a management course?
In the end, you get a paper that might be useful in UK or Canada, but not in the US. You cannot substitute Master's classes in Cybersecurity with these courses in the US. For WGU (that is an American Online University), you can check the eligible courses/certificates here: partners.wgu.edu/Pages/BSCSIA.aspx and here for the Masters: partners.wgu.edu/Pages/MSCSIA.aspx
--> This course is a waste of money and kind of a scam, at least in the US! It looks like you can save money, but actually, you get a useless piece of paper.
In the US, you see a ton of similar tricks. You want some:
Let us talk about Mentoring. People wish to have a mentor because it is helpful. Some companies offer paid mentorship programs, but the mentor gets nothing. Do you want a free mentor? Ask people on Twitter or LinkedIn or join "Cyber Mentor Dojo" -> that is free!
Are you not able to find a mentor? Use this website until you find one, and it contains more knowledge than most mentors have.
The golden rule is:
If you use google and see things on the first rows: Companies pay for these positions, it has nothing to do with the actual quality. Some companies tell you how awesome they are... ask real people in the field (Discord, LinkedIn, Twitter) and do not trust advertisements. Everything has a good and a bad side... if you only see a positive side in an article-> it is spam and a (paid) advertisement.
In Cybersecurity, you find many helpful people, and you get most things for free.
The second message indicates you get a Masters of Business Administration for about $450. Sounds great, right. The reality is, you get a certificate, that is it. If you look closely, you see weird things: I am in the US. The course company is in Canada, and CPD has something to do with the UK.
The message on the left side has more info: You get the fundamentals.... for a "Masters Degree"?? You get proficient in mitigating threats in a management course?
In the end, you get a paper that might be useful in UK or Canada, but not in the US. You cannot substitute Master's classes in Cybersecurity with these courses in the US. For WGU (that is an American Online University), you can check the eligible courses/certificates here: partners.wgu.edu/Pages/BSCSIA.aspx and here for the Masters: partners.wgu.edu/Pages/MSCSIA.aspx
--> This course is a waste of money and kind of a scam, at least in the US! It looks like you can save money, but actually, you get a useless piece of paper.
In the US, you see a ton of similar tricks. You want some:
Let us talk about Mentoring. People wish to have a mentor because it is helpful. Some companies offer paid mentorship programs, but the mentor gets nothing. Do you want a free mentor? Ask people on Twitter or LinkedIn or join "Cyber Mentor Dojo" -> that is free!
Are you not able to find a mentor? Use this website until you find one, and it contains more knowledge than most mentors have.
The golden rule is:
If you use google and see things on the first rows: Companies pay for these positions, it has nothing to do with the actual quality. Some companies tell you how awesome they are... ask real people in the field (Discord, LinkedIn, Twitter) and do not trust advertisements. Everything has a good and a bad side... if you only see a positive side in an article-> it is spam and a (paid) advertisement.
In Cybersecurity, you find many helpful people, and you get most things for free.
© 2021. This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license