Cybersecurity, PDUs and LinkedIn Training

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year 2025.  During the holiday season, I had to get fourteen professional development units (PDUs) to maintain my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification by mid-January 2025.  I had my PMP since mid-January 2013.  

The next big question I had was where to get my PDUs and what course I should invest in to earn 14 PDUs.  I decided to go with the LinkedIn Training service because I have been impressed by their improvements in IT learning.  

After watching this video called Satya Nadella On Evolution Of SaaS via Devan Patel's LinkedIn Post

I realized that the world of business applications will be significantly impacted.  Business applications as we know them may not exist in the next five to ten years.  However, I envision cybersecurity staying around and evolving.  Therefore, I took the following cybersecurity classes, which helped me earn my 14 PDUs and learn more about cybersecurity.  I was impressed with the content.  I took the following Cybersecurity classes on LinkedIn Training:

• The Future of Work and Cybersecurity on the Metaverse: 0.75 PDU
• Building and Auditing a Cybersecurity Program: 1.75 PDUs
• Cybersecurity Foundations: Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC): 1.00 PDU
• Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity: 1.50 PDUs
• Cybersecurity Awareness: Cybersecurity Terminology: 1:00 PDU
• Cybersecurity Awareness: Protect Your Privacy: 1.25 PDUs
• Building an Application Security Program: 1.50 PDUs
• Building a Cybersecurity Awareness Program: 1.25 PDUs
• Emotional Intelligence for Cybersecurity Professionals: 0.50 PDU
• Insider Threat Risk Management: 0.50 PDU
• Cybersecurity Awareness: Cloud Security: 0.50 PDU
• Cybersecurity Awareness: Phishing Attacks: 1.00 PDU
• Leveraging AI for Governance, Risk, and Compliance: 0.25 PDU
• The OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model (LLM) Applications: An Overview: 0.75 PDU

That totaled to 13.50 PDUs.  I took the following acquisition classes on LinkedIn Training:

• Outsourcing Management: 0.50 PDU

Overall, I enjoyed all of the courses, and here are my favorites from the list:

• Cybersecurity Awareness: Protect Your Privacy - It provides practical information on how we can protect our privacy online.
• The Future of Work and Cybersecurity on the Metaverse provides insight into how people are addressing cybersecurity in new technologies.
• Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity - It does a good job of defining some of the threats in the AI space.
• The OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model (LLM) Applications: An Overview - It's an overview course that provides insights into the security vulnerabilities of LLM technologies.

I am fortunate to have access to the LinkedIn Training service via my employer and my county library system.  I recommend you check with your county library system to get access to LinkedIn Training since it is an excellent resource if you want to get credits for your professional development to maintain your respective certificates or develop a learning culture with your team.   

Let Me Charge You Per User.

Yesterday I saw the following tweet from LinkedIn:
“RT @benparr: Linkedin Surpasses 100 Million Users [INFOGRAPHIC] – http://on.mash.to/eIVmAw”

This led to me thinking on how the business model in Information Technology (IT) has shifted to defining business value from the perspective of a user. Let me explain.

Back in the day, vendors made money by charging customers on the number of CPU’s or the number of transactions their software supported without degrading the quality of the software service. There were several companies including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SAS and others which followed this model.

When did the transformation begin? I believe it began when Google came along and started buying companies like DoubleClick and other online advertising companies. This opened up the world to a regular Joe or in this case a regular Enoch to generate revenue via online pay-per-click ads (PPC). At that time Google, Yahoo and other businesses recognized that individuals like you and me have a specific business value and the individual can increase his business value by how pro-active they are in using these online technologies. Then came Facebook with Microsoft’s help (Mr. Zuckerberg, you are one lucky dude!) started to leverage the business value from its users. Facebook and others recognized that money could be made via targeted ads and analyzing user behavior. They inturn showed their business partners that there is a better return on investment (ROI) on the marketing dollars by using logical platforms created by companies like Facebook and Twitter.

Recently I heard on NPR (this may be out of style after congress is done slashing funding for this service) that investment companies are investing in companies like Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., etc because they are generating money and everyone is excited about. These companies see their users as assets of a company. Switching gears a bit, Google is offering their cloud services to different companies and they are charging businesses a flat fee for the service which is based fee per user per year rather than fee per CPU or transaction. This model is cleaner since it identifies per business associate and it doesn’t require a techie geek like me to figure it out. Therefore “Go Fish”…I mean go figure, the business world always understood that its users are its life blood and now IT is aligning itself to it.

Would I invest in a dot com startup?

Every Joe on the street thinks he can make a quick million or two by starting his own dot com company. Hey Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, founders of YouTube.com did it. Unfortunately there is a saturation of the web sites which promise functionality however they are dependent on your, the user's, data. The first question to ask is why would I want to put my information on a third party web site so that web site founder can make some money. It is the sad truth but most of these companies will not last long. For example let's look at various Social Networks:

• MySpace.com - one of the first site which actually picked up in popularity. Now it is mired in mediocrity and I don't see anything new and exciting happening on the site. Did I mention that they have added Facebook like functionality.
• Facebook.com - I have to say that I was a skeptic when I joined this site however this site offers neat functionality where the user can actually spend time on the site. I am a big fan of Facebook's scrabble application
• High 5 - Started by an east indian and it's being marketed heavily in the east indian community.
• Orkut - I have to say this is probably one of the worst social networks I have come across. It is probably Google's worst purchase.
  
• Kadoo - A new social network site whose UI looks promising however I still don't have an incentive to join this group. I am not into propogating my identity across the internet
• Linkedin.com - I like this website. It's a social network for your professional contacts
• Xing.com - It is a similiar network like Linkedin however this one is popular in Europe
• PageFlakes.com - Someone emailed me asking me to experience this site. Once again I ask the question. Why should I sign up on PageFlakes.com?
• NING.com - This is the UBER social network where anyone can create their own social network. UI is not that great and it is meant as a research application.
  

After I mentioned all of these social networks, how would a investor invest in these kind of businesses? Frankly everyone of these social networks offer similiar if not identical functionaliy. I would probably want to invest in networks which have alot of users and the network has a niche like Linkedin and Xing which only work with professional social networks.