What Is The Process To Achieve A CCNA Designation?

 

Network Security Engineer - CCNA

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What is a CCNA Level Engineer and What Do They Do?

The IT support and services industry is somewhat different than other industries offering professional services to businesses. While the financial industry, lawyers, accountants, and others have industry-standard certifications and required licensing to do business, the IT industry does not.

That’s not to say that there are no benchmarks that IT services professionals meet. Instead of an industry governing body – or the government – setting specific qualifications to do business as an IT professional, certifications are earned from the various hardware and software vendors to prove competency in servicing that specific hardware or software solution.

CCNA is one of those vendor certifications that network engineers work, learn, and test to earn.

CCNA stands for “Cisco Certified Network Associate.”

As you’ve likely guessed, Cisco – the world’s leader in networking and security hardware and software – is the vendor that administers the testing to earn the CCNA certification.

CCNA certification sits on the second tier (Associate) of a four-tier Cisco Career Path Certification program. The four tiers are:

• Tier #1 – Entry
• Tier #2 – Associate
• Tier #3 – Professional
• Tier #4 – Expert

The CCNA designation is assigned to individuals that have successfully completed proprietary Cisco exams in one or more of the following disciplines.

• CCNA Routing and Switching
• CCNA Security
• CCNA Service Provider
• CCNA Cloud
• CCNA Collaboration
• CCNA Wireless
• CCNA Cyber Ops
• CCNA Data Centre
• CCNA Industrial

What Is The Process To Achieve A CCNA Designation?

The training to take the exams is available to applicants in the form of online courses, hard copy books, and in a classroom setting. Once the individual has gone through the material and has proven an acceptable understanding of the material, he/she goes on to take the exam.

Cisco’s CCNA exams are different from the exams you took in school. Cisco exams do not have a set pass/fail score. The pass/fail score fluctuates according to statistical analysis. So going into the exam, the candidate does not know how many questions he/she must answer correctly to pass the test.

After the candidate takes the exam, a report is generated by Cisco showing how the candidate did on each piece of the exam along with an indication as to whether the candidate passed or failed.

If the candidate passes, they are then CCNA certified for the next three years. The recertification process involves taking the exam (but not exactly the same questions) again or taking a test from a higher Cisco certification tier.