To become certified, candidates will pass one exam on the following domains:

• Enterprise Security
• Risk Management, Policy/Procedure and Legal
• Research and Analysis
• Integration of Computing, Communications and Business Disciplines

The exact weighting for each of the domains will be determined soon. A Job Task Analysis (JTA) is running until Sept. 30, and those interested in helping with this can take the survey here (a T-shirt will be given away to every tenth person completing the survey).

After the JTA ends, the next step in the process is the authoring of questions, which is scheduled to occur from Nov. 1-5. Those interested in participating in the Item Development Workshop can find more information on it here.

Microsoft MCDST Certification Being Phased Out
The Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MCDST) certification is being phased out with the required exams for it retiring on March 31. Created with the release of Windows XP, this certification requires candidates pass two exams:

• 70-271: Supporting Users and Troubleshooting a Windows XP Operating System
• 70-272: Supporting Users and Troubleshooting Desktop Applications on a Windows XP Operating System

According to the Microsoft Web site, those currently holding MCDST "can upgrade your certification to include a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification and a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) certification by passing just one exam. These added certifications help validate your comprehension of the functions and features of the Windows Vista operating system, your ability to deploy and support Windows Vista and your skills related to troubleshooting network connectivity and applications issues within Windows Vista."

An upgrade path from this certification to one on Windows 7 does not currently exist. More information can be found here.

Four Oracle Exams Ending Beta in November
Four certification exams from Oracle are scheduled to end beta in November. The first two, both in the server and storage systems category, end on Nov.6:

• 1Z1-546: StorageTek Tape Libraries Essentials
• 1Z1-547: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems Essentials

The latter two, both application exams, end beta on Nov. 13:

• 1Z1-549: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 Distribution Essentials
• 1Z1-550: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 Configurable Network Computing Essentials

More information on these, and other Oracle exams, can be found here.

Technical Book of the Week: Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux, 3E
By far, one of the best technology authors in the business is Mark Sobell. I have yet to be disappointed or under impressed with anything he has written, and the third edition of A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux keeps that trend going. Far from just rehashing what you can find online, this book logically progresses you through the concepts you need to be able to administer Ubuntu as if you'd been using it since day one. Following the summary, each chapter ends with both Exercises and then Advanced Exercises that challenge your knowledge and reinforce the topics covered.

Chapter 25, "firestarter, gufw, and iptables: Setting Up a Firewall" was my favorite of the lot. It would be so easy to stick to the standard rhetoric that many follow ("You have to have a firewall -- the next three pages are dumps of configuration files"), but this book does not fall into that trap. It begins right off with firestarter, then introduces ufw before moving to gufw (an interface to ufw), and spends ten pages on iptables. Twelve questions then follow in the Exercises and Advanced Exercises section, including the following three:

• How would you remove all iptables rules and chains?
• What do rule match criteria do? What are they used for?
• Define a rule that will silently block incoming SMTP connections from spmr.com.

When you finish reading this chapter, you don't just know that you should have a firewall and have skipped past a text dump, you know how to setup a firewall and effectively manage it.