Cisco is getting ready to launch its expert-level wireless certification and is looking for beta testers.

Registration for a beta version of the CCIE Wireless written exam has already begun. The beta tests cost $50, last three hours, and are ongoing until Nov. 14 at Pearson VUE testing centers worldwide.

Just a few months ago, Cisco announced its first wireless certification, which is now part of the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) line of credentials. The CCIE expert-level wireless certification is sure to gain lots of interest from wireless networking engineers.

“The CCIE Wireless certification, to be launched later this year, will validate that a professional has the expertise to design, manage, and support mission- and business-critical wireless networks, as well as the job skills and technical knowledge required of an expert-level network IT practitioner,” Cisco says. “This written exam is the first step in obtaining the CCIE Wireless certification. Successful candidates will have mastered broad theoretical knowledge of wireless networking and demonstrated a readiness for the CCIE Wireless lab examination.”

Candidates who pass the beta exam will be eligible to schedule a lab exam. The written exam will cover numerous topics related to wireless LANs, as detailed on Cisco’s Web site. Candidates will have to answer questions on the planning, design, implementation, operation, and troubleshooting for WLANs.

Skills tested by the exam include determining WLAN security policies and constraints; evaluating Layer 2 and 3 network infrastructure; determining access point quantity and placement based on a site survey and customer requirements; drafting security policies; verifying WLAN operation; monitoring of performance trends; and ability to validate and analyze client devices and network infrastructure.

Those are just about all the details I have on CCIE Wireless right now. Since we have a bit more space, I want to pass on some results from an index that measures IT job security and the risk of unemployment.

Earlier this year, we reported that IT job security had fallen five times faster than the national average between January and February, according to a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns conducted by ScoreLogix. 

After February, however, IT job security started rising, and went up nearly every month through August. The IT job security score finally dropped by 4.6% in September, however, and October – a bad economic month by any measure – hasn’t been measured yet.

“This sharp decline [in IT job security] can be attributed to the difficulties in the financial sector where demand for IT professionals is weakening due to mergers, bankruptcies, and severe cost-cutting throughout the financial industry,” ScoreLogix writes.

The Job Security Index is based on a patent-pending unemployment risk scoring model that utilizes research conducted by ScoreLogix and analysis of economic data from government agencies and other sources. The Index produces a number which indicates how robust job security is for all industries and sectors like IT or construction and manufacturing.

The IT index fell from 154.9 to 147.9 between August and September, while the nationwide score for all industries stayed about the same at 120.

Results over the past year show that U.S. companies adjusted their IT needs downward at the beginning of the year, but once that process ended they started re-investing in IT or maintaining existing spending levels, resulting in better job security, said Suresh Annappindi, founder and CEO of ScoreLogix in Delaware.

Through most of 2008, job security for all industries averaged together was falling while IT job security was rising, the index finds. The latest results show that IT job security is now worse than it was in January, and Annappindi says it’s likely IT job security will continue to fall for about the next six months.

Jon Brodkin is senior writer at Network World.