My CLC journey (Check Point Learning Credits)

[Danny]

Ever wondered what CLCs are? Those learning credits Check Point introduced a year ago (see announcement).

CLC Website | Datasheet

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Cyber Security Learning Credits (CLC) Cyber Security Learning Credits (CLC) is a new path for end-users and partners to purchase certification training vouchers via the product catalog with products and services orders.  CLC is a new program that enables you to get the most of your Check Point Cyber Security investments and meet your business goals.  Check it out at the product catalog in the Training section or contact clc@checkpoint.com for more information. You can use CLC training vouchers and credit cards for courses. For training voucher information contact CLC. For CLC Calculation Chart for Course Catalog click here.

As there is no CLC management portal yet to check the status of available CLCs that one can use for trainings or when they are about to expire (they do expire after 12 month as mentioned in the above Datasheet) I wrote to clc@checkpoint.com to check for the status and expiration date of our CLCs. However, Toni Ponderreplied I shall send confirmation when we bought CLCs or use COOP funds (we use these for our Juniors, not CCSMs like me).

So I'm here to find out what it takes to use CLCs already available within your UserCenter account.

Step 1: As there is no CLC portal yet, I went to the Training & Certification page.

Step 2: I picked a course I'm interested in attending. Number of CLCs required for the course: 20

Step 3: I pressed the button 'Enroll with CLC' and entered the next page to see if my company has enough CLCs in order to register the course.

It seems my company has 22 CLCs in its leaning credit bucket. Or does the overview mean I need 22 CLCs (20 for the course + 2 for the exam?). Hmm. I think it wouldn't make sense to show me this summary page if we wouldn't have enough CLCs so I'm positive this means we have a total of 22 CLCs currently. After enrolling for the course we should then only have 2 CLCs anymore. So I pressed 'Enroll' and Voilà!, I'll receive a confirmation mail soon. Perfect!

Step 4: Confirmation E-Mail received.

This mail is a little inconsistent. While the subject clearly says 'Training confirmation for CCAS', the mail body reveals that the confirmation is just for my request being received and that additional confirmations of my UserCenter account and CLC order are still required. Oh well. As far as I know we never ordered any CLCs. I was under the impression that you get them as a benefit for doing purchases with Check Point. Oohh.. I see my course slipping away already.. wait, the order summary says: "CLC vouchers used for this order"! So we actually had enough CLCs available and 22 of them were used for my course? Why 22? The cost of the course was only listed with 20 CLCs. Looks like they included 2 for the exam as I assumed above.

Oh well. Let's hope I can attend the course anyhow. Shay Solomon ?

[shay_solomon]

Hi, 

Your points are valid and we are working now to improve the experience. Currently the enrollment for CLC based courses are done manually through our team. the CLC community is growing very fast and by Next quarter (Q4/18) the system will be 100% automatic where you can Check your CLC credit balance in the user center and/or Training portal after login. In addition all the verification steps per enrollment will get automated with no manual delays, that is the simplification we plan to introduce. You won't have this screens anymore. Another change that we going to implement is the option to include or exclude the exam voucher (this 2 extra CLCs that you mentioned). Our development team is almost done and I hope that by Oct/18 time frame the automatic CLC system will be on production. 

I will update the forum with the progress.  I'm available for any question or request at shay_sol@checkpoint.com 

Many thanks for the feedback. We are taking seriously every input. 

Best Regards

Shay 

Shay Solomon | Director, Cyber Security Education Services BU

+972-52-3769206 (Mobile/Whatsapp)

+972-3-7534721 (Office)

Tel Aviv, Israel

http://www.checkpoint.com/clc

[PhoneBoy]

Great that we are improving the experience.