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In focus: Professional development and training

Sal Ortega
Sal Ortega, director of
Security Operations

Vanderbilt IT values each team member's professional development, which includes career pathing and training. As the organization continues to grow in size and scope, so, too, must its staff's skills knowledge base. VUIT's career pathing program helps team members consider their motivations, challenges and goals each year. Team members then share these with their managers to incorporate into their day-to-day activities. Often times, career pathing conversations lead to pursuing certification requirements within a specific discipline. These requirements demonstrate the threshold to be met for proficiency and mastery of the subject matter encompassing a need. Certification may require an examination; however, the testing mechanism is not all-inclusive or necessarily indicative of the work required to maintain a certification.

Within the past year, VUIT's Security Operations team achieved the milestone of having 90 percent of its team members gain Security+ certifications, 100% of incident response team members reached their mobile forensic certifications, and 100% of the network security team members earned PAN ACE certifications. Additional personal achievements were in SANS GCFA, SANS GCIA, CCSA, and MTA.

"With the ever-changing landscape of IT and the need to keep these environments secure, this type of continuing education is highly necessary—especially for my team," said Sal Ortega, director of security operations. "They've worked hard to fulfill their daily responsibilities while also focusing on developing new skills and keeping other skillsets current."