AI governance and cybersecurity certifications: Are they worth it?

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), SANS Institute, and other organizations are releasing new AI certifications in the areas of governance and cybersecurity or adding new AI modules to existing programs. These may help professionals find employment, but with the area being relatively new, experts warn certifications could be out of date almost immediately.

Data protection and privacy makes up about a third of AI governance, J. Trevor Hughes, IAPP’s founder and CEO, tells CSO. The rest includes algorithmic bias and fairness, intellectual property rights and copyright for both training data and AI outputs, content moderation issues, trust and safety issues, and the management aspects of putting together a team to oversee all these issues. “When we look out at the broad world, we see privacy professionals and cybersecurity professionals have incredibly transferable skills. If they can layer in some AI governance training and awareness, we can scale much more quickly to respond to a need for hundreds of thousands of governance professionals in the next decade.”

The case for AI governance and cybersecurity certifications

As adoption of generative AI proceeds at a breakneck pace, companies will be increasingly more desperate for AI governance and cybersecurity experts. And, since the field is so new, few people will have any actual work experience in the area. So, training and certification programs will proliferate, to help fill the gap.