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Important New Initiative for IBM Certification Test Security


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IBM has sent correspondence announcing a new Initiative for IBM Certification Test Security that they will be sending violation notices and revoking exams where they feel you used outside assistance to prepare for the exam.
What is NITT at IBM

IBM's Professional Certification Program has launched a new initiative designed to detect non-independent test taking (NITT)


What this means to you as a company is that individual employees may be notified directly, not the company, that their exam is felt to be taken in violation and their exam and certification is being revoked. They also cannot take any exams for six months following the revocation.
The notification is sent only to the individual found to be in violation. (Due to personal privacy requirements, the violation notice cannot be provided to the business partner firm

According to the IBM NITT website:

1.        Use any unauthorized study guides, or other materials, that include the actual certification test questions

This is a very broad coverage as IBM does not fully offer complete study guides and some third parties have gone too far by basically duplicating many exams in their prep material.  So there is a huge area of grey space that is not met.  Proper training materials without memorizing an exam.  Practical exams are much better and geared to test working knowledge.  Cisco is a good example of these.

IBM has built a sample letter you can find on the same site and tries to explain how they detect it:
IBM identified your testing violation by conducting extensive data forensics. This included a detailed review of test results, response patterns, psychometrics, and independently conducted statistical analysis.

What do you think about this new IBM NITT initiative? Will it affect how you study for IBM exams? Do you have the resources you need from IBM directly to complete the exams? I think this is a good certification topic