CompTIA: Our Trustmarks are too hard

Industry body introduces new foundation Trustmark after revealing pass rate for badges stands at just 30 per cent

CompTIA is introducing a new foundation-level Trustmark accreditation after admitting the pass rate for the rest of the badges is just 30 per cent because some companies cannot master the basics.

The industry body has six Trustmark accreditations available – in areas such as cloud, security and managed services – which allow companies to prove their expertise and commitment in certain technology areas.

Todd Thibodeaux (pictured), CompTIA's chief executive, told CRN a new entry-level, foundation Trustmark is coming soon to ensure channel firms can pass the basic tests before graduating to the more difficult badges.

"We're developing an IT Business Fundamentals Trustmark," he said. "We have a series of Trustmarks... but not one which was a foundation for all of those. So we are going back to create that. We found that when people started to do these higher-level Trustmarks, they realised they didn't know as much or their business wasn't operating as well as they thought it was, so they couldn't necessarily complete the Trustmark. So we created something foundational so there were components of each one so if they could get through that, there would be a better chance of acquiring the other ones."

He said the new foundation Trustmark will focus on basic things such as company governance, record keeping and simple security procedures, which are essential to master before moving on to more difficult technical areas. He admitted the pass rate for existing Trustmarks is "way below half" and closer to the 30 per cent mark.

"They found early on they did not have the basics," he said. "That is common and something you'd expect. Even large companies [find it hard]. We met with Samsung this week and they have a very specific channel strategy around managed print and the US operations have done the Trustmark and now the UK operations are doing it.

"They remarked 'this is tough'. What they are doing is taking [the Trustmark themselves] and then pushing it as a mandate to partners and saying 'you can only do business with us if you have this Trustmark'. They recognise how tough it is."