You.
Hello and welcome to the let's Talk Azure podcast with your host, Sam Foote.
Anne. Anne Armstrong, if you're new here, we're.
A pair of Azure and Microsoft three, six, five focused IT security professionals.
It's episode 22 of season four. Sam and I had a recent discussion around Microsoft Accreditations and how they've recently changed. Here are a few things we covered. What are Microsoft accreditations? What has changed recently around the exams for certifications? What is the new applied skills accreditation and where do you start on your journey to becoming certified in Microsoft?
We've noticed a large number of you aren't subscribed. If you do enjoy the podcast, please do consider subscribing. It would mean a lot for us for you to show the support to the show. It's a really great episode, so let's dive in. Hey, Alan, how are you doing this week?
Hey, Sam, not doing too bad. How are you?
Yeah, good, thank you. Ignite is nearly upon us. Very exciting times. Have you got everything booked and ready to go?
Yeah, all travel is booked and all activities of the week are all planned. So ready to go. Just last day of work today in the UK at least, and then over to Seattle. So yeah, looking forward to it. It's going to be a lot of exciting stuff coming, I think.
Nice. Yeah, it does seem to be a really good buzz around Ignite this year. Seems like there's a lot on the agenda from the tracks and everything that's there. Yeah, it feels like a bigger event to me.
Yeah, well, I've definitely found it's a new location in Seattle as well. It's the new Summit conference Center building. So it's definitely the next upgrade on size. So let's see how it is.
Nice. So Alan, this week, Microsoft Accreditations.
Yeah. So from what I remember, or looking back at our previous episodes, I think we never did sort of one, maybe two episodes on accreditations. I think it's quite in the early days and there's been some new stuff coming out. So I thought it's worth doing a quick update before ignite. And yeah, it's just not necessarily technology based, but it's more about your journey being certified in Microsoft technology.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Should we sort of start from the beginning? Could you just give us an overview of what Microsoft accreditations are and what's sort of available there?
Yeah, sure. So you have certifications so you can take exams and become certified in a role typed sort of role area. So this could be security operations, it could be an Azure administrator, Azure Solutions architect. So probably, God, it's been well now like four, five years ago, maybe six now. Microsoft changed their certifications into role based. So rabbit being around a specific technology directly, a technology like Windows Server or Windows seven, Windows eight, then I think it probably was. It's now based on a role. So like modern management, administration, security, operations, identity and access management, that kind of thing. So you can take one or sometimes it might be two exams and then you can be accredited with a stiff occasion that then you have to renew every year, which we can go through that sort of process later. That's been the main focus of it. But recently there has been a new one come out called Applied Skills and we'll talk about that later. But that seems to be more hands on, maybe somewhere where you might start with becoming certified and some of the other parts are, which are more around. I guess the learning part is that you can do modules on Microsoft Learn. So learn Microsoft.com and you can start doing modules and there's some quizzes at end of modules and things like that to then as it sounds, quiz you on the information you've just been sort of taught. So there's some small modules there. There's loads of modules and I can't remember how many there are on the various areas. So you can start learning those small sections there which can then help towards an applied skill or a certification.
So are these sort of roles, are they sort of path based? Are there different levels of certs? Do you sort of go on a journey dependent on your job role? How is it sort of structured? Yeah.
So within the certifications, like you said, there are different levels. There's foundational intermediate and advanced or. No, change it now actually it's like foundational intermediate and then sort of expert level. They're kind of basic on the badges being one star, two star, three star to kind of show sort of high level what sort of skills are required, I guess. And with those ones there are paths within sort of different areas. So within security, the exams kind of start off with SC for sort of security compliance and identity. It's kind of the Sci sort of area. But SC 900, what's the other ones? 200, 300, 400 and the SC 100. And that's the sort of three levels there. So when taking exams or looking to take exams, you can start with the foundational ones, get the sort of base information in and then move up to one of the more advanced ones, maybe more specific in an area that you're interested in. So the SC 900 for example, is a sort of general security compliance and identity certification at a high level. And then you can move into maybe one of those three areas like identity security operations and then the IAM one. And then once you've got one of those, all three of them, you can then look to do the SC 100, which is the cybersecurity architect, which then is a higher level. It's an expert sort of tier. And it's kind of going into how do you solutionize the Microsoft security products into an organization that's kind of the three tiers for like security. You've got Azure, you've got Microsoft Three, six, five. You've got dynamics, power platform areas, AI. There's been a load of new AI ones come out now as that technology is in the era of AI now. There's definitely a path there and you don't necessarily have to stick to one path. You can dabble, I guess, in various areas like I have, but yeah.
And do you find, Alan, that those roles sort of align really well to the in, if you're looking to move into one of those actual job roles, do you find that the exams that are there and the certs that are there really well align and sort of reinforce what you're doing day to day?
Yeah, I mean, I can only talk specifically for security, I guess. But, yeah, the roles within those certifications and training is kind of the day to day activities you would be doing in those technologies if you're running them from Microsoft's perspective. I guess the kind of same thing with Azure because I've got a couple of the Azure ones. There are things like data administrator, things like that. So it's looking at SQL and that. SQL and Azure I've not really looked at directly into the AI ones just yet. And what they sort of COVID Yeah, I just kind of feel like they are, or quite a lot of them at least, are roles that people that are looking to go into those professions will sort of align to.
Yeah, no. Do you find with your experience that certs are the way to go in terms of sort of recognition? Have they helped you to sort of secure job roles and sort of given you sort of an advantage in that area?
Yeah, I think they have. I don't think not having them is a bad thing either because it doesn't mean that you don't have the skills to use this technology and you have the same skills as someone who does have them. It might be that you might not be very academically, you might not like to take exams, the pressure, the things like that, and that's one of those things. You don't necessarily have to have them. It does help and some organizations do ask for some of those certifications, especially in the Microsoft partner world and consultancy to prove your skills in that way to their customers kind of thing. But yeah, it definitely has helped put something on my CV to know I've got these certifications. I mean, I've got a few, but yeah, I think it has. I think it's worth getting definitely a couple of. If you're looking to go into Microsoft technology as a product or a company that you're going to skill in, then it's definitely worth getting at least the start off ones and maybe some of the intermediates and then work out where you want to specialize, I guess, and then move into those areas. Like I said, you can chop and change, you're not bound by it. Quite a lot of. Quite a few of them do have some crossover Microsoft entrance pretty much in all of them around access to various things. I think it definitely does help.
Okay, so, yeah, can you just dive in and talk about what are certifications and how the exams have recently changed?
Yeah, so I guess we kind of talked about the certifications just now, but we can definitely talk about the exams. So previously, apart from about maybe a couple of months ago, you had to take the exams in an exam center or at home where you did Proctor exams. And the Proctor exam was where you set up a desk or set up a room and close the door, make sure that it was clean and clean and tidy. And then you take photos of your environment and Microsoft or the Proctor would validate that and they'd ask you to confirm your screens are off. There's nothing recording, things like that. And then you'd be watched, in effect, via your camera on your laptop or PC, just to prove that you're not looking away or looking at other things. And they would detect noise, like people coming into the room and things like that, and then the exam would be exited and that would be it kind of thing. So you'd have to do the exam. There'd be different sort of sections in the exam. There'd be like a couple of case studies, some question and multi choice questions, and then sort of a, I call a fast round, I guess. And you'd be given one scenario and you'd be asked in like four or five different questions. Would this resolve the answer? The question, in effect, would this resolve the issue and things like that? And you could only answer that question or that option once and go next. And that would be it, you couldn't go back and they'd ask you the same question but with a different solution. So then it gets you thinking about, did I choose the right one last? I don't know, because I can'T go back. So that was kind of it. And you just in effect had to have your knowledge and not necessarily hope for the best because hopefully you would have not crammed but had some sessions to try and collect all that data and be prepared for it. But recently Microsoft announced that you can now open up Microsoft Learn. So within the secure exam, it now allows you to have the Microsoft Learn page up. So now you can use that to kind of help you with some of your questions. And I think this is because some of the questions generally are very specific about what they're asking you. And it may not be something that you do day to day, it might be the thing you do the first time you set up something and then you never touch it, know? And it's something that you'd probably in all know go and Google to go and find it out on the Microsoft Docs pages. So I think they're kind of bringing that in to get you there to allow you to have assistance on finding that very specific detail. But within the exam, you still need to know how the solutions work and how they communicate with other services and things like that. So you still have to have knowledge of how they work and day to day use of them. So I think it's just a combination to help people with those exams.
That seems a lot more realistic. Right. I haven't taken the exam open book, but I've heard that it is advantageous to, from the feedback that I've heard from others, it's advantageous to have learn, but you also need to be able to navigate through, learn and understand the concepts as well. Right. It doesn't negate the need for preparation and it's helpful to unblock, like you say, in these one off scenarios, like in the real world where you would just search for an answer, right. Because you might not do it day to day even though you know a product inside out. Right. Like a certain command or some nuance of a service. Right. So it feels like to me it feels like it's going to take a level of pressure away because you're not going to have to brain cram everything in and miss out because you forgot something, but you're still going to need that core learning anyway.
Yeah, exactly. I think even with some of the exams I've done, you know, they, they what's the Powershell command specifically to do this. And they give you three options, you know, four options. They all look like they could work, you know, the terminology of them. And you're like, I don't use this every day. I did this when I first set it up and now I never need to use it again. And if I need it again, I would have to go and find it. So things like that would be very helpful. You need to know the area that you need to go and search for. Like you said, you need to be able to navigate where you need to go to find, you know, like you say, you still the, the knowledge around the products and things like that. And I think you can't navigate away from it, from learn. There's nowhere else you can go. So you can't go off to Google to do the search to find your learn page or anything like that. It is literally the Learn page and you've got to navigate it from what I've been told anyway or seen kind of thing. I've not actually done an exam with the open book yet.
Okay, so where do you go to get started with getting recognized for your Microsoft skills?
Yes, as we've kind of been talking, we go to learn@Microsoft.com. And you can create an account on there and create your profile. And then from there it has all kind of moved because it used to be in a different portal, but it's now all moved into the same one now. But from there you then can go and find the exams or the certifications that you need that you want to do and then it'll tell you what exams you need to take and then from there it will tell you what modules it recommends you do to start building that knowledge. And that's probably where you would kind of start doing those modules and then trying to see if you can test out some of it where you can. Because whilst the knowledge on Microsoft Learn is great without putting into practice, you won't kind of see how you Use it in the real world kind of thing. The learn modules are giving you some great detail, but it's specific scenarios and things like that. So you do need a bit more than just that to sort of pass the exams. Well, I believe anyway, that's where you kind of start with it. Once you're ready, you can then sign up to do the exam and you pay for that. It's not free. You might be able to get some discounts through EA agreements and things like that. Or Microsoft sometimes have what they called skill.
Skill challenges.
Yeah, skill challenges when big events are happening. So it's probably going to be one for ignite, I expect, somewhere. And then they also give you some training as well. Whilst you're doing that, sometimes there has been some sort of webinars and things like that that you can use to sort of help gain some other information around the exams and stuff. So, yeah, you go there and then you sign up for your exam, schedule it, take it, and then you find out instantly whether you've passed or failed. And then you can retake a couple of times, I think it is, and then you have to wait a bit longer if you've failed it a couple of more times than that. But I think it's 70 come over the points. It's like 700 points out of 900, I think it is that you have to pass. So it's quite a high pass rate. But the exams aren't too scary to be fair. As long as you have that general knowledge, it's pretty reasonable. I think it's fair. Yeah.
I suppose you've got to approach each one at the level that it's at. Right. The fundamentals are obviously going to lay that solid foundation and as you ratchet up, you've got to expect that you're going to need varying levels of preparation and knowledge as well. Right. And I think that's where what's great about it is if you are in a job role and you want to get certified aligned with that job role, you're going to take a lot of your day to day knowledge and you're going to know a lot more than you think you do going into that exam. Because I think for me personally, whenever I'm having to sit an exam or prepare for something, if I've ever got any base knowledge in an area, it's a lot easier. I recently did a blue team certification and that had a lot of parts about Wireshark in it and other tools. There was some scripting and bits and bobs like that, and a lot of the threats that you were hunting, you needed to use specific log formats and things like that. And even though I was learning something new, like threat hunting, interrogating raw seam logs to find answers to questions, but with some base understanding of the data that's flowing in and the systems that are being monitored and like, oh, we're looking at a web server. So I come from a programming background, so looking at web server logs made a lot of sense to me. Right. So even though I didn't know everything, I still had to prepare for that exam. Because there were lots of things that I didn't know. But when you do have some of that professional knowledge, even if it's not a complete coverage of it, you're going to give yourself a really big leg up. Now you may not be in that role at the moment, you may be preparing for it. Right. And I think that's where your guidance of building out development environments, having a go testing it, I know that can sometimes be cost prohibitive if you don't have an MSDN subscription that's giving you credit or it's a particularly expensive area that you're focusing on, but at least trying it out in the real world whilst you're going through that guidance, even if you're paying from it from another provider, like you're using like a plural site or some other course that you've acquired. For me personally and everybody's different, I know loads of people that can just read books and just absorb them. Right. I can't do that. I'm very practical in that way. So that would also be my sort of guidance of it is actually work through the motions and get comfortable with it if you can.
Yeah, definitely. And that's probably a good point actually, that different people have different ways of learning. Some people might be able to consume a book, like you said, that's been created by. There are some deep dive books out there that have been created by MVPs and Microsoft to help people not necessarily pass the exams, but help understand the technologies in different areas. And yeah, some people might need to go onto a course to do it, to be able to get that hands on interaction and to get not necessarily one to one learning, but one to many class learning.
I would say there's an industry. Sorry, Alan, there's an industry around Microsoft Certs.
Right.
They've been around for such a long time that there are training providers that have every level of support that you could possibly, you know, from in class to online on know with all the extra content that they've created themselves. But it is probably worth calling out that a lot of that now is included on Microsoft Learn, isn't it? It's in Microsoft's best interest for you to pass as many exams as possible. Right. It reinforces their pool, know, certified and trained professionals. So I do feel like they're giving you as much assistance as they possibly can. Really? Yeah.
They're giving you a head sort of the starting run, aren't they, that if you learn this stuff and then you might need to then go further and get other information like I said, I don't think it gives you everything. I think you either need to run it in the real world or in at least in a demo environment or test environment or maybe additional learning from books, courses, et cetera, to finish off that sort of bit. I remember doing a course and it was for one of the older exams. I think it's a Windows Server 2008 some time ago. And they basically said here's this massive book, we're going to go through it basically and run through the labs and everything, which is great, but this won't make you pass the exam. You've got to then do all this other stuff to do it. But I think that sort of requirement has definitely come down more from that type of exam because they were some of the older ones. These new role ones definitely fit with what you're doing kind of thing. Rather just being here's a technology and like Windows Server 2008 and you need to learn everything about it kind of thing.
Yeah, I remember when I did my advanced SharePoint 2007 development course. We went on site and we got given a folder, kind of like the materials had been printed out, they'd been punched and put into a folder and then we'd literally turn each page, but we didn't actually do any of it, if that makes sense. Right. Like as in all it was is going through the content basically. Right? And it was like because we used to make what they called SharePoint parts or something. I can't remember what they're called. I don't really do SharePoint anymore, but I think they were called SharePoint parts. And that was like your grid system and all of your controls that you'd build and things like that. And we were reading like line by line, ASP. NEt basically code. And then in order to pass the cert you had to regurgitate how you would write them. And it was a long time ago and I can't remember what the actual final assessment was. I don't know if it was just foundational training with. No, there must have been because I got a certificate. But my point being is we're not there anymore. This is all online. It's mainly consumed remotely on demand. Right. So from that perspective, I think it's good, especially for working professionals. You can prep for these over a long period of time, as long as you need really, and fit it in and around other stuff that you're doing.
Yeah, definitely. And also when you get them these certifications, they need to be renewed every two. Well, starts off with initially you get it for two years and they need to renew every year and you get six months in advance to renew it for it. And that is quite an interesting sort of process in that when it first came out we thought we had to in effect reset the exam or maybe a subset of it or something like that. But it's a multi choice question bit but it's part of the Microsoft learn page and in effect you can go in and do a reassessment and basically it's asking you all some questions. Again, I think it's like 25, 26, 27 questions. It's open book as far as I'm aware. And you're not being monitored and things like that. The main exams, it's almost like a refresher to make sure you understand what's changed and that you still have the core knowledge. So you can just run through those and you get quite a few tries of that renewal and then once you've done that you get it for another year and then you just keep going until the cert is retired and then you can do your final one. So I think they've just done that with MS 500. You can't take it anymore and we can still renew till November, December I think it is. And then it retires now because it's not needed anymore. It's been replaced with other stiff, other certs and things like that. So you can keep your knowledge up to date, keep validating it to prove that you still know what it is so you don't have to worry about it expiring for those. And the foundational ones, the 900 series, they don't have an expire on them. That's quite good as well.
Nice. Thanks for that. Alan, is there any bits that we've missed or anything else that you want to cover?
Yeah, we haven't talked about the applied skills yet.
Okay.
The new thing that came out very recently, I think like within a month ago. Within a month I think. So Microsoft brought out these applied skills accreditations and this isn't necessarily about the info about the technology, but it's actually proving that you can deploy the technology or use the technology. So this is in effect a lab. So they spin up a lab for you when you take these assessments and you have 2 hours to in effect take them and Microsoft basically give you a task list of what to deploy and specific requirements for it and then you go off into the Azure portal or the power platform portal, et cetera, depending on what the type of exam is and you start creating resources and configuring them up specifically to how Microsoft have asked you to. And then as you do that, once you complete it, they then I'm guessing run some API calls or Powershell or something like that to then query the environment to prove that you've built it as they've asked and then you get a score. So I think this is more of a, rather than being worried about taking exams and being certified, this is proving that you can actually do the do kind of thing. So one of them is setting up Microsoft Sentinel and things like that. There's another power platform, one in there as well, and securing your network, screwing your environment with Azure networking. I think it's another one in there. I think there's only eight at the moment, eight or ten of them in various areas for now. But like I said, they've only come out a month ago and yeah, you get a badge for it, you can put it up onto LinkedIn, things like that. So again, that's probably very useful to have on going for other jobs to prove that you have the capability at least to do a basic install of some of this technology or use some of it rather than just being, I know, the knowledge. So I guess it's just hint it from the other side now. Yeah.
And like you say, it's a little bit more specific scenario based, isn't it? So yeah, if you don't want to go into that prep for a whole exam across, and arguably some of those exams are quite wide ranging in the technologies, aren't they? Right. If you do have one niche area, I suppose these can also be really helpful to sort of prove out that capability, can't they, without having to maybe stretch yourself too thin potentially or have to prep as much for it.
Yeah, definitely. So I think I took my first one this morning to at least have first hand experience on taking it. So it was really good. I did enjoy it. I don't think there's anything else around certification training. You've got the different various ways of getting certified or accredited, including the new skills, applied skills, and the way you get there I think is based on whatever suits you and your learning sort of techniques from.
Yeah, nice. Thanks for that, Alan. That was really good. Always good to talk about certs and yeah, there's a lot to go through there. So yeah, it's a big topic.
Yeah, definitely. Okay, Sam, so what's next week?
Next week I'm going to be covering Azure container apps. There is a few different ways to do containerization and management of containers in Azure. Azure Container apps is one of those options and I'll take you through start to finish, especially if you're comparing different ways to sort of deploy in Azure. I will cover that a little bit, but I may do a completely separate episode on that topic.
Okay, cool. So because Ignite is next week as well, I think we're going to try and do either a live episode or at least record whilst I'm out there at crazy night times of the day for one of us.
We will try to produce something next week, that's for sure. We've got a few ideas. So it will either be an ignite recap, either live or recorded, not sure yet, or it will be Azure container apps. Less likely that it's that. Or we may not produce anything next week until Alan's back the following week, but we'll see how we go.
Yeah, I think that'd be interesting, wouldn't it? Let's try and do a live one. Let's see if we can do it. Cool. Okay. So did you enjoy this episode? If so, please do consider to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify really helps us to reach more people like you. If you have any specific feedback or suggestions, we have a link in our show notes that you can get in contact with us.
Yeah. And if you've made it this far, thanks very much for listening and we'll catch you on the next one.
Yeah, thanks. All.