How IT certification can help you earn more

Your weekly round-up of the questions asked by readers of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World sees Smart Answers offering advice on how IT security certifications help career advancement; how can companies overcome the complexity of S/4HANA migration projects; and why are cloud credentials so easily compromised in cyberattacks?

Certification for CISO Success

Cybersecurity certifications are known to support lucrative career advancement. Hoping to help our IT professional readers improve their careers, this week we reported on the certs providing the largest pay boosts right now. 

But – hard as this is to believe – money isn’t everything. Readers of CSOonline.com were keen to understand what the best IT certifications can do for their careers, beyond boosting their paycheck.  

Smart Answers generates insights from human reportage and thus believes that certification opens career opportunities by showcasing expertise. This includes helping professionals stay current with evolving threats and developing compliance and risk management capabilities. Perhaps as important is the opportunity to develop the career networking that certifications offer. 

Find out: Besides pay, how do IT security certifications help career advancement?  

SAP Migration Mitigation

This week we reported that more than 60% of companies experience deviations in budget, schedule, and result quality during S/4HANA migration. It’s a pressing concern: SAP user companies are up against the clock.  

Migration to S/4HANA must be completed by 2030, and that’s only if they buy into SAP’s special three-year reprieve beyond standard maintenance end-of-life at the end of 2027. 

Readers of CIO.com headed to Smart Answers to further understand the issue: why is the transition so difficult? What can organizations do? Culling insights from decades of reporting on SAP, Smart Answers gives the opinion that proper resource allocation, internal support, change management, and business-wide collaboration are crucial for successful migrations. There’s a lot more of course, but for that you need to ask Smart Answers yourself.  

Find out: How can companies overcome the complexity of S/4HANA migration projects?  

Cloud Compromises

This week we also reported on an Oracle Cloud breach that may impact thousands of enterprise customers. We explained how a bad actor targeted the login infrastructure of Oracle Cloud, exploiting middleware vulnerability, and demanding ransom from over 140,000 tenants. 

It’s obviously a huge problem, and readers of CSOonline.com wanted Smart Answers to tell them how it happened. Why are cloud credentials compromised in cyberattacks? Smart Answers confirms that 99% of cloud security incidents are attributed to customer misconfigurations and then scaled for maximum impact.  

The prize is big when phishing, IT network breaches, or exposure in code repositories allows the bad guys in. Large-scale cyber operations have been reported to exploit vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, too. Stay safe. 

Find out: Why are cloud credentials so easily compromised in cyberattacks?  

About Smart Answers 

Smart Answers is an AI-based chatbot tool designed to help you discover content, answer questions, and go deep on the topics that matter to you. Each week we send you the three most popular questions asked by our readers, and the answers Smart Answers provides.  

Developed in partnership with Miso.ai, Smart Answers draws only on editorial content from our network of trusted media brands—CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World—and was trained on questions that a savvy enterprise IT audience would ask. The result is a fast, efficient way for you to get more value from our content.