4/3/2002 -- Last week, Herndon, Va.-based TruSecure Corp., operators of the ICSA security labs, officially announced a new security certification program for IT professionals.

The company's first title, called the TruSecure ICSA Certified Security Associate (TICSA), is now live. According to TruSecure, the vendor-neutral TICSA is designed to "validate and improve foundation-level information security skills for network and computer administrators and other technology-auditing specialists."

To earn the TICSA, candidates must meet a minimum experience requirement of two years (or 48 hours training), sign an ethics agreement, and pass a 70-question multiple choice exam. The exam costs $295 (U.S.), and is available in the US and Canada at Prometric testing centers. An international edition is expected later this year. (Editor's Note: To find out more about the TICSA exam, read our review of it here.)

According to the TruSecure Web site, the company also plans to release a higher-level TruSecure ICSA Certified Security Expert (TICSE) certification sometime in the near future.

According to a press release, the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2 has endorsed TICSA as complementary to its popular, high-level Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) credential.

"We are endorsing the TICSA credential because it fully represents our standards for certification at the practitioner level," James Duffy, managing director for (ISC)2, said in a printed statement.

To find out more about TruSecure's certification program, click here. -B.N.