The EC Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA) and Licensed Penetration Tester (LPT) certification is the most advanced ethical hacking certification by the EC-Council. The certification is based on the analytical process of ethical hacking and complements the more basic Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). While CEH presents hacking technologies and tools to the learner, ECSA focuses on analyzing what the outcome of these tools are. Learners who go through ECS training and certification are able to identify security risks to a network, system or infrastructure and mitigate these risks, thus keeping data safe.

Given the highly sensitive nature of this kind of training, it is important that learners enroll with licensed content providers called ATC’s (Accredited Training Center) and get authentic training from CEI’s (Certified EC-Council Instructor). Achieving the ECSA certification ensures that you get a high quality, recognizable certificate, which can help you work on security architectures of many types.

The ECSA certification is approved by ANSI. Many of the other competing certifications are not licensed by ANSI and typically carry no value ( Google “certified penetration tester” and see what arbitrary made up wonders you come up with). Getting certified by such bodies is virtually worthless as anyone, literally anyone, can found their own “Certification body”. So stick with the ANSI approved certs like the ECSA and most of the SANS certs.

You must obtain the ECSA exam before enrolling for the Licensed Penetration Tester (LPT) certification. The LPT is advanced course content as well, covering pentesting and security based on intense past assessments and best practices.

Both the ECSA and LPT certification curriculum are developed by the top brains in the field. A minimum of 47 modules and topics are taught, including basics such as need for security analysis and War Dialing, Advanced Sniffing techniques, advanced wireless testing, log and snort analysis and advanced exploits and tools. Penetration testing includes pre-penetration testing checklists, VoIP, VPN, database, log management, broadband, Bluetooth/hand held and physical security penetration testing.

EC Council certifications are not just extensive but credible too. The ECSA and Licensed Penetration Tester certs are just now hitting the popularity levels that CEH was at about two years ago. Once CEH saturates in the market a bit more, expect these two certs to be right where CEH is now. Because, well, hackers aren’t going to want to stop learning how to hack. Right?