The start of a New Year is a good time to identify new skills, knowledge or competence that you want to achieve or develop. Doing CPD is not only rewarding, it is a good way of demonstrating your commitment to maintaining professional competence in a technological world that throws new challenges at our members on a weekly if not daily basis.
Referring to the CIISec Guidance for Continuing Professional Development (CPD), ‘identify and plan’ are the first two step in the CPD cycle. So, if you haven’t already made your CPD plan for 2025, then take the time to develop one. Using a table or spreadsheet set out 5 columns and use the following as a guide:
- What do I want or need to learn? Be specific in identifying and describing what you want to learn, ensuring it is realistic, but also challenging.
- What will I do to achieve this? Identify your preferred learning style to plan the specific actions you will undertake, if possible, use a mix of activities.
- What resources or support do I need? It’s likely there will be cost implications, so think about whose support you will need to turn your plan into a reality. Support is often essential in keeping you motivated to stay on target, but also in helping you to achieve your objective.
- What will be my success criteria? Identify what you will have learned, these are known as the learning outcomes, this is a way to measure that you have achieved the objectives you have set yourself to maintain or develop your skills, knowledge and competence.
- Review or Target dates. Set a realistic date to review your progress or to achieve what you have set out to learn. Remembering that having some small successes achieved quickly will aid motivation towards achieving the end goal.
Remember learning comes in many formats, it’s not all about going on training courses or attending events and webinars!
Doing something new in your current role, where you’ve undertaken some research on a new or evolving area is also a recognised way of developing your knowledge and skills. Volunteering is not only rewarding, but can develop your knowledge, skills and competence. This can be done for a Professional Body like CIISec; in the workplace or by giving back to the community. If you are interested in volunteering with CIISec then contact membership@ciisec.org to get more details of the various volunteering opportunities available.
Then there are the soft skills of communication; teamwork; interpersonal; time management; problem solving; adaptability and critical thinking. Understanding and developing some of these are critical when it comes to having a good working relationship with peers, colleagues and team members. They also help you to understand and achieve a good work life balance, as we all know there are never enough hours in the day for a cyber, digital or information security professional.