IT professionals are primarily focusing on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence for their next technology certifications, a pattern emerging globally from recently released survey results.
TechTarget’s annual IT salaries and careers survey, conducted earlier this year, surveyed more than 1,000 respondents to assess the state of technology certifications in the North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Latin America regions. Three-quarters of tech professionals surveyed have at least one certification, and 59% of a more targeted group of 703 respondents said they were likely to pursue a new certification within the next 12 months.
48 percent of the 532 respondents planned to pursue cybersecurity as one of their next certifications, making it the most popular choice globally. AI certifications came in second, with 41% identifying this as a goal. Cloud computing came in third with 33%, followed by data science and analytics with 22%. The question about certification plans allowed several answers.
Cybersecurity certifications reflect ongoing IT concerns
Unsurprisingly, given the consistency, cybersecurity is a top certification priority for companies Demand for technical talent in this area. For Abhinaya Tayi, CIO at Forwardis, a freight forwarding company headquartered in Berlin, Germany, cybersecurity is the top certification priority for her IT team. This focus is consistent with the company’s key IT concerns.
“I see cybersecurity as one of the biggest challenges [and] the current rise in ransomware,” she said.
According to Tayi, ISACA’s Certified Information Security Manager and ISC2’s Certified Cloud Security Professional are among the top cybersecurity certifications of interest to the company.
Cloud certifications are another priority – one tied to cybersecurity, Tayi emphasized. Your IT group uses the Microsoft Azure cloud for much of its design and development work. Therefore, it is important to be certified in the resource management, design and security aspects of the platform. But cross-cloud knowledge is also valuable, she added.
“In general, I think it’s good to be certified for every type of cloud [platform] – AWS, Google or Azure,” she said.
AI certifications are becoming increasingly important
In the TechTarget survey, AI emerged as a prominent target for upcoming certifications. However, compared to more established areas such as cybersecurity and cloud, there are slightly fewer options available. This is particularly true for generative AI (GenAI). According to Dice, which runs the tech careers website, HR professionals run into this problem when evaluating tech talent.
“Hiring managers and recruiters often rely on formal certifications to determine whether candidates have the required mix of experience and skills for the job,” said Art Zeile, CEO of Dice. The lack of “clear benchmarks” in complex areas like GenAI made it difficult for HR professionals to assess technical capabilities, he noted.
Dice’s 2024 Tech Sentiment Report, released in September, indicates lower levels of certainty when assessing AI capabilities. The report, which surveyed 390 HR professionals, found that 84% rated themselves as extremely or very competent at recruiting technology professionals. But 73% of respondents felt the same way about their knowledge of AI experts.
However, the outlook for competency assessment is starting to improve as more and more AI certifications come onto the market.
“Several certification programs are already available, but the landscape is still evolving,” said Quynh Nguyen Ba, senior vice president and head of Asia Pacific and Japan markets at Hitachi Digital Services, the technology services subsidiary of Japan-based Hitachi Ltd.
Nguyen cited online courses and specializations that focus on generative adversarial networks and natural language processing, pointing to Coursera and Udemy as two providers. He also listed cloud platform providers such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft, noting that the providers’ certifications cover their GenAI APIs and services. Additionally, he mentioned Databricks, a data analytics platform provider that offers GenAI engineering certification.
As examples of specific AI certifications, Zeile cited Microsoft’s Azure AI Engineer Associate, AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty and Google Cloud’s Professional Machine Learning Engineer.
Academic institutions now also offer an AI training path. Andy Lin, CEO of Provoke Solutions, a technology services company based in The Colony, Texas, said he has seen a recent increase in GenAI executive education programs at universities such as Columbia, Harvard and MIT. These programs stem from schools’ previous certification programs for traditional AI.
“In the last six months to a year, they’ve really expanded the certification to include generative AI,” Lin said.
Cloud, data provides AI path
Some technology professionals are not ready to go directly to AI or GenAI certification. Instead, they could follow a gradual progression that starts with other technologies and builds from there.
Tayi said she supports such an approach and cited data science certification as a first step toward AI programs. Data engineering training is another natural entry point for Forwardis’ engineering staff, who collect GPS location and customer data, she noted.
A similar pattern is emerging at Hitachi Digital Services.
“Most of our employees are pursuing certifications for cloud architect, data engineer and data analyst roles,” Nguyen said.
According to Nguyen, the momentum behind these certifications will continue for months, if not years. But AI and GenAI will add weight to data and cloud certifications and provide differentiation as employees pursue those paths, he added.
Benefits and Limitations of Certification
Certification plays multiple roles in the technology industry.
For tech workers, certification validates their skills, increases career prospects, improves job performance and provides professional recognition, Nugyen said. Employers benefit from increased employee expertise, higher productivity and a greater competitive advantage. Additionally, companies that promote certification demonstrate a commitment to professional growth that helps with employee retention, he said.
Sixty-seven percent of the 6,166 respondents Dice surveyed for its most recent annual technology pay report released in January 2024 identified training and education as an important workplace benefit, Zeile found.
The certification provides essential knowledge that can help technicians advance in a rapidly changing market. But according to Lin, practical experience is also crucial.
“It will be important that people apply what they have learned,” he said.
Practical experience is particularly important in areas such as generative AI. Different GenAI tools require different prompt engineering techniques, and challenges specific to particular use cases add another layer of complexity, Lin said. Aspiring GenAI specialists “wouldn’t learn the nuances” through a certification program, he claimed.
“Adding or removing a word from a prompt can make a big difference,” he said. “You have to go out there and play with these tools.”
John Moore is a TechTarget Editorial writer covering the role of the CIO, business trends, and the IT services industry.