Disclosure: I have a CISSP (previous employer paid for study / exam). I would agree that within technical circles, the CISSP is not worth much at all (in certa

Disclosure: I have a CISSP (previous employer paid for study / exam). I would agree that within technical circles, the CISSP is not worth much at all (in certain crowds, it's harmful). If you're well-connected in the industry when job hunting and you have a known body of work, there's little benefit. Rightly or wrongly, though, it still holds pull with recruiters and management. Getting the current de facto seal of approval from a third party saves them the effort of having to make an initial skills assessment themselves. Buzzword-filtering corporate recruiters lap that stuff up. I know that I've seen a lot of job ads which (wrongly) ask for a CISSP as a requirement. Additionally, when I went to work in Japan, the CISSP formed the centrepiece of evidence in the work visa application as to why I was an "expert" they needed to go overseas to hire.