As the world shifted from real to virtual owing to the pandemic, the importance of data and its protection has only multiplied; What it has also highlighted, is the urgent need for professionals with well-founded security expertise.

The International Association of Privacy Professionals, or IAPP, is known for offering the most industry-relevant, comprehensive certification and training on data privacy and protection, which is up the very minute in all aspects imaginable. As it is commonly referred to, the Certified Information privacy professional or CIPP is an aid to organizations across the globe to reinforce risk mitigation and compliance practices. It also provides practitioners with valuable insights that add value to their businesses.

These provide you with an edge over all those who do not have this certification, irrespective of the field you belong to. What confirms the premier nature of these certifications is the fact that IAPP has the best industry experts to make one embark on this exciting journey in the groundbreaking area of Privacy and Data protection and separate the best from the rest.

Now, we shall discuss the top three most popular and highly paying certifications that you can take to establish yourself as a data privacy professional:

There are 4 flavors to CIPP, namely, CIPP/Asia, CIPP/Canada, CIPP-US, and CIPP/E; the classification has been made based on the region they attend to. We shall limit our understanding to CIPP/E here as it covers the GDPR and US privacy laws, which are more in demand.

This certification equips you with the knowledge of the privacy-centric laws and regulations in the EU jurisdiction together with their practical application so that you can secure your position as a data privacy professional in the fast-evolving Information technology economy.

Earning this credential signifies your thorough understanding of the complex and all-encompassing concepts of data protection laws, their application and privacy. These include, but are not limited to, a comprehensive study of the laws belonging to the European Jurisdiction, which boasts of the most beautifully drafted privacy legislation that has taken the world by a storm, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (EUGDPR). In addition to this, other enforcement models and the foundational aspects of privacy, its governing principles, the EU-U.S. Privacy shields, the legalities for handling and transferring data, both personal and sensitive, are covered.

This certification will make you stand out amongst others and get you greater recognition from top employers for hiring purpose.

This credential speaks for your sound understanding of Data privacy and related laws, also puts you in the category of dedicated and proficient Data Protection Practitioner.

This credential is a supplement to the CIPP/E certification. With this, one can be considered eligible for implementing the Data Privacy regulations, to work in an organization. It trains you on how you can create a company vision, build a data protection team, implement system frameworks, aid communication to stakeholders, measure the overall performance, protect your organization from improper handling of personal data, respond to data subject requests, amongst other aspects of the data privacy regime. In simple terms, where CIPP/E answers your whys and whats, the CIPM goes a step ahead and makes you aware of the hows encountered during the practice.

This shall significantly benefit those with prior background of the GDPR and US privacy legislation, along with knowledge of project management and the systems involved. The IAPP, however, does not specify any eligibility requirements to enroll in this course.

Launched by the IAPP in 2014, this certification is the first and only of its kind. Its primary objective was to satisfy the specific requirements of tech pros for data protection and security across all stages of IT product and services.

This will help you learn about the data protection concepts and practices that affect IT; Establishing these practices for the collection of data and its transfer; Communication of data protection issues to management, legal, and marketing partners; How to envisage data protection into the state-of-the-art technologies such as cloud computing, surveillance and facial recognition; Prevention of privacy issues in the Internet of Things landscape, and acquaint you with the audit infrastructure.

This course prioritizes information security professional, engineers, techies; It imparts the necessary skills to readily understand privacy regulation and ensure that your IT infrastructure has best practice techniques embedded into it.

The duration of all the certification exams mentioned above is 2.5 hrs. Total number of questions: 90

Passing score: 300 (The number of questions answered is converted to a common scale of 100-500)

The exam fee for the

(i) Maiden attempt is 550$ or Rs.40,136

(ii) Subsequent attempt is 375$ or Rs.27,366

Now that we know the importance that these certifications carry, it is a no-brainer to conclude that with the growing interest, knowledge of the public at large, and increasing demand of professionals in this area, the competition has also increased manifold.

Thus, it is advised that one must prepare beforehand in the most nuanced manner possible to avoid any virtual heart attacks on seeing the closely worded multiple-choice questions during the 2.5-hour long course of the respective certifications’ examination. The nature of the CIPP/E, CIPM and CIPT certification examination is such that mere rote learning of the laws and regulation won’t suffice and one needs to have adequate conceptual clarity of the entire syllabus and its practical application.

Therefore, professional guidance in this respect shall not only save you hours spent in assessing the exam requirements, figuring out the syllabus, but also device for you a workable plan of action covering the essential concepts, for you to crack it well in time to progress on your career path to becoming a distinguished entity in the field of privacy.