There is a vast library of IT certification content here at CertMag.com, and each year it gets a little deeper. With new articles four days a week most weeks during the year, that’s roughly 200 new articles every year. Some are articles previously published in Certification Magazine, but about three-quarters of what you get here on the website is original content.

No doubt there are some of you out there who read everything that shows up here. (Or at least we hope there’s no doubt of that. And if you really are one of those hardcore CertMag readers, then gold star for you. We’d like to shake your hand and buy you a drink.) The average drop-in visitor, however, probably doesn’t get even a real taste of everything that shows up here in a calendar year.

That’s why recaps like this are so helpful. There’s no need to wonder what you’ve missed: Other visitors to the site have already voted with their mouse clicks, and curated a list of the most compelling articles to appear on the site in 2021. We’re going to do this in three installments, comprising the 30 most-read new articles of the year.

Today we’re bringing you the top of the list, our 10 most popular articles of 2021:

1) Salary Survey 2021: An all-new Salary Survey 75: “It would seem that when you’re a colorful billionaire who collects yachts and Fabergé eggs, you can say whatever you want about where the money came from. Money doesn’t always let you have your way, of course, but it can provide various degrees of the greater independence and security that most people are looking for.” (by CertMag Staff)

2) Salary Survey 2021: Certification keeps skills sharp, adds salary oomph: “Certification can also make you more attractive to potential employers. More than 77 percent of survey respondents either agree (40.9 percent) or strongly agree (36.9 percent) that they’ve experienced greater demand for their skills since becoming certified.” (by CertMag Staff)

3) The advantages (and increasing prevalence) of simulation-based IT training: “Simulation has also begun to change the way certification exams are conducted. Many certification exams now include performance-based questions, which normally assess a candidate’s problem-solving ability in a simulated virtual environment.” (by Reena Ghosh)

4) Mapping training and certification to cybersecurity job roles: “To fill the current shortage, it’s estimated that employment in the field now needs to grow by approximately 89 percent worldwide, and 41 percent in the U.S. specifically. Organizations with cybersecurity hiring needs must adopt a two-pronged approach to fill the ongoing gap.” (by Rob Rashotte)

5) CompTIA’s certification pedigree is potent, but some of its credentials are not: “CompTIA’s certification program is currently in good shape, anchored by some true warhorses among industry credentials, while also being flush with the bloom of some newer information security certs. But in the volatile and ever-changing information technology world, an important question to ask is: What will the future of CompTIA certifications look like?” (by Aaron Axline)

6) Salary Survey Extra: Have you ever cheated to pass a certification exam?: “That doesn’t mean that no one at all is cheating, or that no one at all is lying about having cheated. Just that an overwhelming majority of anonymous respondents with no particular incentive to fudge their responses said, ‘I don’t do that.’ ” (by CertMag Staff)

7) Salary Survey Extra: The most effective IT career preparation: “The individual terracotta figures have similar face shapes, but it is generally believed that no two of them, across the entire burial site, have identical features. You’d think that the workers conscripted by the emperor’s court would have maybe created a dozen or so basic types and then repeated them over and over. But perhaps even if that had been the intent, variety would have crept in anyway.” (by CertMag Staff)

8) Salary Survey Extra: Deep Focus on SAS Certified Specialist: Base Programming Using SAS 9.4: “Last year’s Deep Focus series didn’t include any SAS certs, and we only featured a single SAS cert in 2019. That article, however, included a highly unusual data point in that two-thirds of the survey respondents featured were women — a singular rarity in the male-dominated IT sphere.” (by CertMag Staff)

9) Salary Survey 2021: Moving on (?) from COVID-19: “Alongside every other calamitous outcome of the global outbreak of COVID-19, workers in countries around the world were furloughed or laid off. In the United States alone, employers cut more than 30 million jobs, with an unknown number of certified IT professionals among those suddenly scrambling to replace lost income and, perhaps more crucially, suspended access to healthcare benefits.” (by CertMag Staff)

10) Who is winning the cybersecurity war?: “If the situation is as dire as it is often portrayed, then why hasn’t society descended into anarchy? Are businesses, governments, and organizations smarter than we give them credit for, actually winning the cybersecurity war with honeypots while keeping their victories silent? Is behind-the-scenes cybersecurity technology actually much stronger than anyone is letting on?” (by Emmett Dulaney)

KEEP GOING:

2021 in Review: Most Popular Articles 11 through 20

2021 in Review: Most Popular Articles 21 through 30

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