How To Master the CCP/CCA Courses

[00:00:01] Hello Climbers and welcome to Climbing Mount CMMC. I got by six. Good job. What is it doing? What's that? Welcome back Climbers to another episode of Climbing Mount CMMC. My name is Bobby Guerra. I'll be your host. And, you know, local Sherpa.

[00:00:27] And then you're also joined with Kaylee Floyd, my co-host. Say hello Kaylee. Hello. I don't normally do the intro. She normally does it and does it a lot better than me. So, you know, maybe you can comment on. I don't think I've ever said the word Sherpa. Sherpa? We should try to work that into every podcast as much as possible. I feel like. We don't get paid for it, but I think, you know, because it's climbing Mount CMMC, Sherpa is probably relevant, right? I think that's fair. Yeah.

[00:00:54] So today we're going to be talking about the CCPCCA prep for it. I'm also a provisional instructor. Hopefully we'll be a CCI soon. I've submitted my form and information. We'll even talk a little bit about that. Some of the things that we've seen. As a provisional instructor, there are certain perspectives I have about it. I've taught the course. You know, I think maybe I'm coming up on a year now as being a provisional instructor. Maybe taught six, seven, eight classes, something like that.

[00:01:20] So not a ton, but it's been hugely helpful for me to learn the material and get more experience. And then Kaylee, you just took your CCP. So we just, you kind of thought it would be great for us to talk about this topic and really just purely focus on that type of content. This should really help people that are thinking about doing the CCP or CCA, trying to get a general idea of what the content is going to be, how helpful that'll be in their journey in the ecosystem, and also kind of preparing for the test, as well as people that are provisional

[00:01:49] instructors that are trying to go to their CCI. So we'll just try to cover all of that as much as we can in this episode. Yeah. I know there's a lot of people that I've talked to that are, I guess you could say the go-to person, the point of contact for their company that is tasked with this whole CMMC thing. You know, they have been given the crown of CMMC guide for their whole company. And some of them are very unrealistic.

[00:02:17] Some of them are a little bit more realistic than others. But something that I always recommend is if they haven't gone through it yet and they are the main point of contact for their company, for CMMC, they should go through the CCP course. So those types of people and even people trying to get into the ecosystem that want to be assessors and whatnot, this is going to be great for them. And I think I would have wished that I had something like this in a conversation that somebody already had too. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that.

[00:02:46] So I want to focus more first, like why you would want to take your CCP and then eventually possibly move into your CCA. You touched on one of them. You said, if you're trying to help get an organization ready. I would say as a provisional instructor teaching the material, I've kind of, I would split it into half, like half of the material has to deal with history, things of kind of how we got to where we were.

[00:03:14] Some of it is based on the cap that is old, that isn't really necessarily as relevant. And the other half is going to talk about how the assessment pieces go, the assessment process, the scoring and the actual controls themselves. And I think that half and those pieces are going to be very relevant for someone trying to get a company ready.

[00:03:40] The other half is going to be probably not as helpful. It's good to know. But if you're trying to move a company, a small 20 person, 30 person manufacturing shop, you're probably not going to give a crap about the history of CMMC. You just want to get your company ready. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't really care about the executive order that started at all. I mean, it's great and all. You can do thumbs up. Awesome. Good to hear about that. Office of Undersecretary.

[00:04:07] You know, you could do a thumbs down to that if you wanted to, whatever. But yeah, definitely the second part about it would be a lot more helpful for those types of people. And I think when you're picking the teaching academy that's going to do it for you. So they were called LTPs. I think there's a new term, but it's... License training providers. Yeah, there's a new term I think they came out with. I can't remember what it is. I don't think there is. Is it? Not that I know of. LTP? Well... There's the publishing partners. Right.

[00:04:37] You. Yeah, those are LPPs. But the LTP, like trying to understand what perspective they're going to be teaching and what material they're going to be using is the first thing I would try to determine. So if you're going to... If you're going through the ecosystem, you want to pick an LTP that understands that you're trying to not just get the CCP, but you're trying to get the knowledge to help with moving years. So how do they approach it? How are they teaching it? What's the perspective they're going to come from?

[00:05:04] Obviously, the objective is to prepare them to take the test because that's what the CCP is for. But the LTP has a lot to do with some of the examples and the conversations that have had. So for those that may not be aware, there's a thing called CADM. So that is the CMMC accredited training material, C-A-T-M, CADM. And as a LPP, you can only... You have to create your CADM material.

[00:05:31] You send it to the Cyber AB and the DOD. They review it. They look at it. Once it's been approved, you can't change it. Like, boom, that's how it is. And that's the problem with a lot of material that's out there is it's all like two or three years old, and a lot of this stuff has changed now. So the material is stale. You know, in fact, the test is still pointing towards the old cap and a lot of other stuff that's not necessarily as relevant anymore. Correct. Right. Yeah.

[00:05:59] And I will say this is just a little bit of like, I guess, an alert or a pop-up on the side that I feel like is still important to note in this episode is if you're working with somebody who is a consultant of some kind and is helping your company get through this and they have only gone through the CCP course, it's not going to fully prepare you

[00:06:24] to know everything you need to know about scoping and to prepare you to answer all of the tough questions around it. There's things that you have to learn for yourselves when going through the ecosystem and experiencing that. I just want this is a great starting point and I think it's important for people to go through it. I've talked to people that are coming that need coming to us that need help getting CMMC

[00:06:50] ready and they are the consultant for that company and they come in and they have their CCP and that's excellent. But the questions that they're asking, I'm like, I'm concerned about like what you're asking here. And so all of that to say is like just because they have CCP next to their name, you know, or things like that doesn't mean that they are all knowing and all encompassing of scoping. And you will learn as you go through CCP, but you're not going to know the nitty gritty

[00:07:19] ins and outs and not even through the CCA course fully. There's things that you have to learn just by doing and experiencing and going through. But you're looking at me like, I don't think I agree with that. So I want to see your perspective because you're like, no, no, no, no. This is coming from somebody that learned a lot about it before even going to the CCP and then going back to the CCP and then going through the tests and everything. I'm like, hmm. Okay. Yeah.

[00:07:47] I sort of felt that way when I was going from my CCP to my CCA, right? And then I went and sat the CCA and I was disappointed. I was disappointed when I sat there. I don't know if we ever had that discussion, but I remember being disappointed after I sat my CCA. Course. Because I felt like when I sat the CCA course, the CCP was such a gobsmack to me as I was coming in because it was so much information. It was so – and I sort of expected it to be that level of magnitude when I went to the CCA. And it wasn't.

[00:08:16] It was a lot of the same material and same kind of concept and conversations. And I just felt when I left the CCA course, and I'm hoping that ISACA, when they go through and they redo this material, I hope they correct that. Let me just be honest with you. I didn't feel like I was prepared to do assessment after I left the CCA course. They didn't cover how the actual assessment process would work. And I think part of the problem was is a lot of that CADM that was created,

[00:08:44] it hadn't been quite as defined as it needed to be in 32 CFR. So they were trying to be a little bit higher level. So all that's done now. So in theory, you should be able to get a lot more specific with how that would go. So I don't think it was necessarily who wrote the material as much as it was just the time it was written in. Hmm. But to me, they're critical missing pieces. Like, how do you actually do the real assessment for C3PO?

[00:09:12] Well, because it's not really covered as much in the CADM material that's out there, I think you see a lot of variations the way that C3PO's are doing it. And maybe that's on purpose. Maybe they're like, well, if we did it that way, then they show up. There would be an argument about how C3PO's are supposed to do it. But even then, just talking about, I think it would be great to have maybe some examples of how you really could do scoping and then how you would define and write it out in the assessment pieces as far as in the forms

[00:09:39] and some of those and how those forms look and how they're filled out and how you submit those. Just having some more information about really how the assessment works in the nuts and bolts of it. They just, it's more theory and some of the other pieces. And then they rehash the controls over again, which you already did. But they're not covered any specific magnitude of difference, in my opinion, between the CCP and the CCAs. One of the things I love that Edwards does is they cover all the controls in the CCP.

[00:10:08] And some of the organizations will only cover the level one controls in the CCP, whereas Edwards does, I think they do them all. And when you go to the CCA, you're doing the same controls over again. So like cover them from a different perspective as a CCA. When I teach the course, I try to do that to some extent, have some deeper conversations around the controls and things. It's not significantly different when I'm covering the specific controls from that perspective. And I just think that's a bit of a shame.

[00:10:34] It should be more about from that real true assessment perspective. That's just my perspective. Some people may feel totally different. But that's not the deal. Well, then turn off this episode. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Well, I'm curious because you said you want to do your CCA. I'd really like to know your perspective when you said if you feel the same way. Something that I will say, I'm doubling down. I'm realizing where what I was saying previously about going through the CCP before was coming from.

[00:11:01] You know, I went through my CCP course with Corinne and she's phenomenal. And I always learned so much from her. I really enjoyed it so much so that I like rewatched the recording that she sent to me multiple times and reviewed it because I did even learn some new things that I didn't even know before going into it, which was super cool. But coming from the other side of things where I also I'm handling the hiring process for us

[00:11:29] of reviewing a lot of resumes of people that have CCP next to their name, right? So I'm seeing it from a really different perspective there as well. I think that people could really just memorize things, probably like anything, any type of cert. You could just memorize a bunch of things and just put it next to your name and you could go through. And unfortunately, the test, you know, there was a few questions and things that involved more scoping questions

[00:11:57] and some questions around controls that were more nuanced that maybe you wouldn't be able to get if you didn't truly get what they were asking. But there's not a lot of those questions. There's a lot of questions that have to do with, you know, like just memorization, like any test. And so unfortunately, I think after going through it, I realized like you could go through that and not fully comprehend these things. But yet you could also go through it.

[00:12:23] And if you truly devoted yourself to it and wanted to learn that, you could learn so much. You know what I mean? There's both ways that I think you could go at it. I agree because you can pass the test or you could be a student of the material. Yeah. You know, and I can tell the difference. And to double down on what you're talking about, because when we do the interview, a lot of times it's me and you. And we'll be sitting with people that are CCP and CCAs, some that just have a massive, you know, different histories.

[00:12:53] And they've worked in different industries. And one of the first things that we always do is we're like, OK, here's a control. Here's how we do scoping. Talk me through that. And you can tell immediately whether they were really students and have tried to understand or have had the opportunity to apply what they learned in real life. And you can pick it up right away, you know, because they don't get it because they they haven't sat down and said, I need to write an SSP. And I need to make sure that it's going to match how the assessment is going to happen.

[00:13:22] And both people might be CCAs, but those the knowledge difference between someone that has sat down and fought that fight and wrote all 320 assessment objectives out and how to do it. And I've had to kind of think, OK, how are we going to do this? And then tried to know how to apply the technology and how to defend it and how to do that tango versus someone that passed their CCA a few months ago. Totally different. Totally different.

[00:13:45] The both same certification, world of difference in the capabilities and knowledge level. Yes. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Also, let's take a step further. And when when you're learning about the cap, I know this this won't be helpful necessarily for you for the test, but look at the new one. Look at the one that's accurate to now.

[00:14:08] Now, when they talk to you about the CMMC level two scoping guide, don't just look at the highlighted parts that they think that you should cover in the test, but actually look at the scoping guide. Actually look at the assessment guide. Look at the process. Like really take in what they're saying through this, because if you do and you read this material, you will be at such a good foundation to build upon.

[00:14:35] And then after you do that, if you're somebody that's working internally in an organization that's getting people ready, you actually have an incredible playground after that point. Because now you get to apply that like physically right there with your hands tangibly with your team and incorporate it. And that is incredible. Some people don't have that opportunity. Some people are trying to break into the space and they don't have a company that they're doing this with. They're just taking it to then get an opportunity after that.

[00:15:04] And that's great and all. But it's hard for them, you know, because they don't have something to build upon. But I would recommend practice it. Like make fake scenarios. Try attempt an SSP with a fake company. You know, that you can just try to figure out how to do this on your own because you're going to learn these, you know, these middle pieces that you don't necessarily get in the CCP. You know, that's so true.

[00:15:31] Like and I've suggested this to other people and they look like they take this look like I just asked them to sneeze out a slug out of their nose or something. Is that a Harry Potter reference? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Because what you're saying is so true. You pass your test. Great. Now what? Okay, you go try to find a job or you try to get in the space or maybe you're trying to do it and you're like, I don't know. Like you lose it if you don't have that. Yeah, you lose it. So the first thing you should do is after you graduate, try to focus on passing your test.

[00:15:59] As soon as you pass your test, the next thing I would recommend, write a small SSP. Sit down and write and just think about the controls and the technologies you'd use to do it because it's going to push you to learn what it is they were trying to make you learn in the CCP and CCA. Do that because it's going to make you better. And when someone is hiring, if they know what they're doing, they will notice that. They absolutely will.

[00:16:27] And it will provide better insight in your interview a lot better, too. But let's switch gears real quick, Kaylee. So you recently passed your CCP. First off, I just want to brag on you a little bit because when I think I've finished doing all the questions for my CCP, I think I had like 30 minutes maybe, if that, 15 minutes maybe to review. You scared me half to death because you said that. I thought I was going to have no time. I was pooping my pants. You had like an hour, right? I had like an hour and a half. Yeah, that's insane.

[00:16:57] Because you kept telling me that I wasn't going to have enough time. So then I was freaking out. I was going way too fast. And you still passed. You don't know what your score is yet, have you? You haven't gotten the— No. Watch me barely pass. I wish I could say that, but, you know, and this might be a little side note. So because I went through the transition. I'm now in the transition where ISACA has taken over the old material still. So they haven't updated the material, but they've taken it over. So it told me that I passed.

[00:17:26] And it was like, yeah, congratulations, green light. There was no numbers on the screen. Like I didn't have any information. And I went into my portal and it said it could take up to 10 days for it to come back. I still haven't gotten it. It's been seven days. So— Because when I did it, I did it where Keiko was being managed by CyberAB. And you got it immediately, the score and all of it and the numbers and how it was. So that's interesting. Fun fact, when I went through my CCA, it was right when the transition was happening,

[00:17:54] when I passed my CCA, just as the transition was happening. And I was terrified that I was going to have to retake the test because they freaked it out and didn't have it memorized. All right. Some director or somebody showed up and they managed to get it printed out. And they're like, well, it's not authoritative. I'm like, well, it's the least evidence. Yeah. Well, I didn't get evidence. So maybe I'm scared. Yeah. They'd come back and go, we have no record of you passing. Yeah, we have no record you took it. I'm like, what? Yeah, that would be unfortunate. Yeah. So let's switch gears and talk about, since you've done your CCP and that you've passed,

[00:18:24] can you, without talking about specific questions, can we go over techniques and ways that you have worked on to prepare for the CCP that you feel was beneficial? The things that helped me a lot were, one, I mean, well, Corinne did a really great job with giving you like practice exams and things like that and practice questions, which are excellent. But please review the CAP.

[00:18:49] And unfortunately, for the test itself, the old version of the CAP and not the new one at this moment. 6.1 is what you have to study. 5.6.1. And yeah, please don't look at the new one, even though you should look at the new one, you know, when learning things in the real world. But another thing that was really helpful was the like level two, level one assessment guide

[00:19:16] and understanding what assets go with which, understanding the different pieces and components to an actual assessment, what it looks like, who's involved. Really, what's so interesting is CCPs are in the real world a lot of the time that I've heard of involved in assessments much because if you're going to be in assessments, you're just going to become

[00:19:41] a CCA. It's not just people are just living as a CCP in the assessment world. But technically, they're allowed to be in the assessment world and they want you to feel like you know what you can do in the assessment world. And so to understand and to comprehend as a CCP what your role is and how you can be a part of the CMMC level two assessments in C3 PAOs is important, even though what's funny is in the real world right now,

[00:20:11] that's not really happening a lot. But yeah, I feel like that was helpful. The other thing is this is just a plug for if you guys want to check this out, which I think you very much should. Tara made a... Tara Lamro. Lamro. She basically made a game, a game out of learning to be not only CCP, but also an assessor. So if you're doing your CCP course or even your CCA course, you can check it out.

[00:20:40] It's called Sector 171. It's really, really cool. It throws you questions, but it also tells you what categories you sucked at and then what categories you did really well at. And then it says, do you want to do another exam or another practice thing on that specific part? She did update it and it was phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. And so I did some of those and... I'm going to be honest. I went to go start to mess with it and I suck at it because it's timed.

[00:21:09] I always think it's timed. I can't handle time. That's the thing that gets me when I'm trying to take time is time. Yeah. I'm not good with time. You have to know it pretty fast too for some of them because it, yeah, it does it really fast. But those were pretty cool too. And they showed like real world like scoping scenarios. And I also loved how she called you out as like an idiot if you answered one incorrectly that was like obviously not right. I'm like, oh gosh, I'm a moron.

[00:21:38] But she just has all these funny little quotes at the bottom. That is so good. And I took my CCP in 2022 and the test hadn't come out. Oh, you old fart. Yeah. I mean, so that's kind of my uphill in a snowstorm going to school both ways kind of story is that like the test hadn't come out yet. And so I was studying all kinds of crap I didn't need to do. There was hardly any.

[00:22:07] There was no practice tests out when I went to go to do it. And so her practice as well as I took mine through Edwards and it was good. They now have practice tests. Corinne has practice tests that she does if you go through her course. I don't know about some of the other ones, but I'm sure they probably do now that a lot more of this time. But Tara's is great and it's free. They have now they have higher levels that you can pay for.

[00:22:36] I highly recommend you go through and do at least the free stuff. And then not sponsored. We're just saying it. Yeah. Like a friend of ours, really, really smart woman that knows her business very, very well and has done a ton of assessments. She also she teaches some of the courses. Right. She teaches with Corinne. Yeah. Yeah. She taught one that I was a part of as well. So, yeah. And so those are really, really good. So that's good. There is a blueprint. So take a look. I highly recommend whether you're doing the CCA or CP. Definitely.

[00:23:06] Look at the blueprint. Look at the blueprint that explains what the percentage is. And from what I've seen for when I took my test, as well as talking with other students who have gone through the course that I've had a chance to teach, as well as with some of the others. A lot of it is CAP related. They are just enamored with that CAP. So understand the order of events in the CAP. Understand what's required to move on to the different phases. Yeah. Those types of topics are very, very important.

[00:23:34] If it's got a number attached to it, know it. So like, you know, the executive order number, the different DFARS that are relevant. All of those types of things, dates that are relevant to activities that happen, those are all things that they might trivial pursuit pull you up. The reason why I say it's important to know those types of things is if you have those, those are simple. It may, it wasn't simple for me, but for some people it's simple. It's just simple. Memorize.

[00:24:03] I know this is the right answer. Done. It's not subjective. There is a portion of the test in the CCP and a lot more in the CCA where it is subjective. And it's their interpretation of how things could be or should be. So if you get all of those right, it, your chance of passing because they don't, this isn't a dynamic test, goes up dramatically. Right. So you're going to have a lot more of those more give me's because you have it memorized.

[00:24:28] Because they might have these longer word problem type questions and you're like, I'm not sure what the right answer is on those. But the other ones you can, if you've gone through the trivial pursuit concept, you have the CAP all in organized, you know what the asset types are. And then one of the other things that I think you touched on, which was great when we were talking, is what each control family has in its category. Oh, my gosh. Yes. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. So that's, that's another one that's really important.

[00:24:57] So like if you're saying, hey, we are going to be trying to identify and verify the user's identity, that's going to be more IA. But if you're like, we want to identify for authorization of knowing who's supposed to be allowed, that would be AC. Right. Yeah. And so then you're like, well, we want to talk about boundary controls and identifying that would be SC. Right. Yeah. So understanding we want to talk about flaw remediation and addressing those things, that would be SI.

[00:25:22] So knowing what kind of goes with different domain families, those you'll get hit that you'll get hit with that on the CCP as well. So knowing those things is helpful. Yes. Yeah, I couldn't agree more on that. And I think that also if you're doing this like real world for the company that you're working for or even going to help another company do this, knowing those things are critical.

[00:25:48] I mean, to understand actually what the controls are saying and what the purpose is behind them is going to be very helpful when writing your SSP and writing your policies and procedures that pertain to it. Mm-hmm. So like win-win in that scenario. That's something that you could study for, for the test itself and also greatly applies to you in real life. So, yes, could not agree more. I do want to ask you, though, like what about for the CCA? Was that test harder?

[00:26:18] Was it more nuanced? Yeah, it was harder. I think the CCA was much harder than it was for the CCP. I had 14 seconds left on the clock when I hit – I had like 45 questions I wanted to kind of go back and review. And when I finished and hit the last one, it said 14 seconds. I was like, well, I guess I'm going with what I got, you know. I can't wait to see how long it takes me. Yeah, you'll smoke me, I'm sure. I don't know. I just don't really do well under time. Just not really good at it. The CCA is expecting you to know more subjective information.

[00:26:47] They want to know more interpretive. There's a lot more word problems in it. There's a – you have to understand conceptually how the scoping process works, how some of the technology is aligning. You have to understand the scoring methodologies better in your approach, how things are going to be marked met or not met. So from that perspective, there's a lot more of an emphasis because it makes sense. You're supposed to be the assessor who's going to be doing the controls met or not met.

[00:27:15] And so there's a much bigger emphasis on it. You know, they're not coming at you with, you know, give me what everything says in 311. They're not doing that. You know, they're not going to give you some assessment objective and say, which one is this at? You know, like they're not going to get to that level of detail. But you need to now have a much better understanding of the domains, what their purpose, what their focus is, what is required, what is not required, how do you – what does the bar look like in order for you to hit met? And then understanding how the scoping and design.

[00:27:45] If you have not had any experience doing those types of things, that goes back to our previous example of what we talked about. Like play with that, create some – do some fictitious scoping, do some other types of things, write some conceptual SSPs and things like that. That will help you start to think and align the different pieces in your head so that you can start trying to address that.

[00:28:06] Because I think the test is written in such a way that if you haven't had at least some of that experience or you've tried to work on that experience, it's much harder to pass just with test material. And the CCA and the material that we had that we teach, I felt like there was more material covered in the test that is not in the prep material.

[00:28:32] And what I mean by that, they're coming at it from – if you've tried to – if you've been in the space, there's going to be more questions that are going to be – are going to draw from real-world experiences of like what might be in specific types of documents and policies and processes, right? If all you've done and you've had no experience in industry, you haven't done anything, you just passed your CCP, now you're going to CCA, you have no real experience, it's going to be a much harder fight for that.

[00:29:02] So – and that's where if you push yourself into scenarios and do those types of things, it will help out tremendously. What about the provisional instructor before we end? Yeah, so the provisional instructor, the way that works in the past, the way that it worked is you had to pay a certain amount of money. And then you went through – yeah, surprise. And it was like a few grand to get the right to be a provisional instructor. Then you go through this training piece that they cover.

[00:29:31] And then they're like, okay, now submit a 15-minute example with a syllabus. They let you pick from that. And then they would review it. And if they're like, this is looking pretty good, then you submitted like a 30-minute video. They would review that. Yeah, it was just like an hour and a half. I had to cut it down. Yeah. You wouldn't stop talking. I wouldn't – yeah. And so then they submit it. And if they like it, then you pass. There wasn't like a multiple-choice question. And that's how you became a provisional instructor.

[00:29:57] And the way that it was supposed to go is eventually Keiko was going to come out with what was called the CCI, so the CMBC Certified Instructor. And they never did. But now that ISACA has taken over Keiko, they've pushed forward with doing that. And the form that you fill out now, they want you to submit a video of you teaching. I think it's like a 30-minute video of you teaching some of the material of some piece. So like for real, for real teaching?

[00:30:27] Or like if you're not a PI right now, you could just pretend to be teaching and then send it in? You could pretend to be teaching to submit it. And I think there's some other stuff that you have to do. There's an article that I posted in LinkedIn that walked through kind of how it would be if you're a provisional instructor to get to CCI. I went through the form process. They want to know how many students you've went through, how many classes you've done. So I was like, oh, my gosh.

[00:30:54] I had to go back through and like I had to reach out to – because I teach with Edwards and Corinne. And I had to go through and ask both of them like what – how many students did I have and then submit that to them so that they would then do it. And I haven't heard back yet. So they may say looks great or like you're an idiot. Go back through and do it all over again. And so I don't know. I'm still waiting to see if I've been converted from a PI to a CCI. That's freaking nuts.

[00:31:22] Now, they also have – ISACA has their own like certified trainer program. And if you had that and you were a certified trainer in ISACA, that can help with that process as well. I haven't – I didn't know anything about ISACA nor had I had any certifications through them. No offense, ISACA, if you're listening to this. You guys are great. I love you. Please don't name me. So I haven't gone through this. And then also CPEs, right?

[00:31:52] So this is all new. You have to do your training pieces. So anybody that has your CCP or CCA, you have to now do – when you go to do conferences or you go to attend webinars, they want to see that you're pushing your knowledge and that you're not going to just sit on your cert and not have any real-world experience, which makes sense. Yeah. It's just – it's a little different.

[00:32:14] This is an important one if you're a CCI that you think, oh, when I'm teaching the material, that counts for my CPEs. It does not. It does not count for that. Now, the first time you've trained it, which is interesting, the first time you've trained the material, you'll get five times the credit. And the second time you teach that material, I think it's double, and then you don't get any credit after that. So that first year that you're an instructor, you'll pretty much fulfill all of your CPE requirements for that first year.

[00:32:45] But after that, you're going to have to use webinars and other types of material. So I had to put in a ticket to get clarity from them on that, and that was – that's the way I read their response, I believe to be correct. Yeah. So it's very interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, so the CCIs are now open. So if you wanted to start becoming an instructor, you can go through – there's a form that you fill out and all this stuff that you have to go through.

[00:33:11] But from my understanding now, we can start getting people to start stepping up. Wow. We'll start getting some fresh blood again. Well, I thought that I was going to become potentially one of the first ever women who were pregnant go through the CCP course because I was supposed to be super pregnant when going through it. But then my son came early. Early. And instead, I was postpartum doing the CCP course.

[00:33:40] I wouldn't recommend that, but it ended up being okay. Yeah, I felt so bad for you. Because you were going through the course, and then you were like at NICU and having to – Yeah, yeah. Would not recommend that. But I think it was excellent. And again, I can't emphasize this enough. If you're going through this for your organization internally or even you're wanting to get into the space and help organizations out, please go through the course. Please learn it.

[00:34:05] Even though I know it's going to be adjusted and updated, it's still very helpful for right now. And there's incredible instructors out there that can really give you just this great starting point. Let's talk about that real quick before we finish is at the end of the year, new ISACA material is going to be coming out. Right, right. There's quite a bit of unknown right now. So if you're sitting the CCP or you're about to go through it, get your certification now. Do it by the end of this year.

[00:34:33] Do it by the end of the year because the new material is going to come out in the year. I don't know. Right now, I haven't been given clarity as an instructor. Like how much time are they going to give us to absorb this material? Are they going to force us to go back through and retest on it? Right. I don't know for sure about the answer on that. So that's going to be interesting how that's going to go. And then if you've taken your CCP on the old material, are they going to give the LTPs credit for the new material to run students through?

[00:35:03] You see what I'm saying? Like this transition between the old material and the new material, how are they going to handle that? That's going to be a little interesting to see how that's going to go. So you definitely want to make sure that if you're taking the material in Q4, get it done. Right. And make sure that you get that test done. But hopefully there'll be clarity as we come into the end. And we will try to have our fingers on the pulse of that and come on here and update you guys when we have more information.

[00:35:32] We don't, as of right now, of recording this. This does come out later than when we record it, not the day of. So maybe by this time we might have something. We'll update you guys. Check our LinkedIn out because we'll keep updated on there as well live. And as soon as we see things being updated. Also, please make sure to check out the links below to hear any of the people that we talked about, the games that we talked about, the training that we talked about. All those things will be linked down below. Stay tuned for next Thursday.

[00:36:02] As always, we're going to record every Thursday. We'll have a new episode. So follow us so you can be notified anytime we drop new material. But until then, guys, as always, remember to keep on climbing. See ya.