Network World — Incidents of cheating on IT certifications are on the rise, a trend that experts say is an outward sign of the desperation felt by out-of-work and under-employed IT professionals.

Training organizations are responding by intensifying their efforts to catch cheaters through cutting-edge defenses, such as biometric identification of test-takers and custom, computer-generated exams.

Slideshow showing results of the IT Ethics Survey

Angry employees tattling on companies that violate software licenses

As IT certifications become a pre-requisite for jobs and promotions, IT professionals are feeling more pressure to pass the exams. IT professionals cheat by paying someone as much as $2,500 to take an exam or by using stolen tests purchased over the Internet commonly referred to as "braindump" materials.

In a survey of 200 IT professionals on IT Ethics conducted by Network World, 58% said they felt that using "braindump" training materials was unethical yet 72% of respondents think that IT professionals use braindump materials on a regular-to-frequent basis. And 12% have directly witnessed someone cheating on a certification exam.

"Cheating is up by about 10%," says Jill Burroughs, director of exam services at CompTIA, which offers 11 certifications for IT professionals including CompTIA A+ and CompTIA Security +. "Since the economy collapsed, the incidents of cheating have been steadily going up...It's human nature that in a down economy, people get desperate...They rationalize that they have to cheat because they are out of work and need a job."

Stolen IT certification exams and materials are "one of our biggest issues," says Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of intellectual property at the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). SIAA focuses on ferreting out sellers of braindump materials, which are unauthorized exam study guides - sometimes stolen copies of actual tests - that are available for purchase over the Internet.

Kupferschmid says test-takers are looking for "any edge they can get, just like a spitball or taking steroids in baseball...People think that if they can get the prior test or get the test answers ahead of time, it will help them pass the test."

News that more IT pros are cheating on certification exams comes at a time when the nation's top computer science schools are grappling with an outbreak of cheating on homework assignments. More computer science students are caught plagiarizing code or working together on assignments than students in any other major on campuses such as Stanford University and the University of Washington.

BACKGROUND: Why computer science students cheat

Cheating among IT pros happens at the workplace, too, as U.S. companies step out of compliance with their software licenses. The full scope of the problem is becoming more apparent as more disgruntled IT professionals are turning into whistleblowers against their bosses.

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