Testing in the military

Pearson VUE partner's with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide Service members, their spouses and dependents, convenient access to professional credentials — an important part of the military life-cycle that includes career development planning, advancement and transition preparation.

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​On-base testing is a proven pathway to help Service members and their families gain professional credentials — certifications that validate experience, confirm expertise and offer real career competitive advantage.

Pearson VUE solutions

Visit Pearson VUE’s Service member pages to view all of the credentialing exams offered at military and government installations.

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Professional credentials are required for both military and civilians operating in critical occupational roles such as medical/health and information assurance, and are strongly recommended for financial management and personnel/facility security.

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In addition to supporting professionalization and career advancement for individuals, credentials are an integral part of high-priority government and DoD funding programs developed to improve transition preparation, veteran employment and military spouse career portability.

Risk, and its contributing factors, can be assessed in a variety of ways, including quantitatively, qualitatively, or semi-quantitatively. Each risk assessment approach considered by organizations has advantages and disadvantages. A preferred approach (or situation-specific set of approaches) can be selected based on organizational culture and, in particular, attitudes toward the concepts of uncertainty and risk communication. Quantitative assessments typically employ a set of methods, principles, or rules for assessing risk based on the use of numbers—where the meanings and proportionality of values are maintained inside and outside the context of the assessment. This type of assessment most effectively supports cost-benefit analyses of alternative risk responses or courses of action.

The benefits of quantitative assessments, in some cases, be outweighed by the costs (in terms of the expert time and effort and the possible deployment and use of tools required to make such assessments).  In contrast to quantitative assessments, qualitative assessments typically employ a set of methods, principles, or rules for assessing risk based on nonnumerical categories or levels (e.g., very low, low, moderate, high, very high). This type of assessment supports communicating risk results to decision makers. However, the range of values in qualitative assessments is comparatively small in most cases, making the relative prioritization or comparison within the set of reported risks difficult.  Analysis approaches differ with respect to the orientation or starting point of the risk assessment, level of detail in the assessment, and how risks due to similar threat scenarios are treated. An analysis approach can be: (i) threat-oriented; (ii) asset/impact-oriented; or (iii) vulnerability-oriented.  Differences in the starting point of the risk assessment can potentially bias the results, causing some risks not to be identified. Therefore, identification of risks from a second orientation (e.g., complementing a threat-oriented analysis approach with an asset/impact-oriented analysis approach) can improve the rigor and effectiveness of the analysis.

The Risk Assessment Methodology encompasses nine primary steps:

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1. System Characterization

2. Threat Identification

3. Vulnerability Identification

4. Control Analysis

5. Likelihood Determination

6. Impact Analysis

7. Risk Determination 

8. Control Recommendations

9. Results Documentation

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The methodology described above can be applied to assessments of single or multiple, interrelated systems. In the latter case, it is important that the domain of interest and all interfaces and dependencies be well defined prior to applying the methodology

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Source: NIST