I have always found it interesting to follow along as certification programs progress over the years. Some of them make it hard to do this, keeping their certification figures under lock and key. In fact, the majority of certification programs fall into the top secret category. I’ m sure the reasons vary, but it brings to mind the possibility that their program growth may not be at a level they are proud of. Fortunately for those of us who would like to know, there are some certification vendors who throw at least some of their figures out there for all to see. So here are a few certification statistics. You might want to mentally insert the word “about” in front of all of them as they are constantly changing.

Current number of active IT-related certification vendors: 120

Of these, the majority are product vendors, such as Cisco and IBM, followed by professional organizations such as CompTIA and the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI), and finally, a few training companies such as CIW and Mile 2.

Number of IT-related certifications available to the general public (i.e. not including partner-only certifications): 600

Number of certifications that have come and gone since GoCertify began tracking them somewhere around 10 years ago: Also 600

At the beginning of this year there were 18,674 Cisco CCIEs; currently there are 20,800. The vast majority are certified on the original Routing and Switching (17,843) track, with just 16 certified on the CCIE Wireless track that launched not long ago.

SANS GIAC information security certifications, which started out the year a shade over 24,000 have surpassed 28,500.

ISACA’s CISA program has grown drastically this year, catapulting from less than 60,000 at the beginning of the year to over 70,000 currently.

I can’t give you Microsoft’s numbers because they seem to have slipped quietly into the top secret zone, hopefully only temporararily.

I hope you have found these numbers interesting.