So let's imagine you've passed the exam, you've received your email, and now you want to apply to become a lead auditor. Well what happens here is you'll be invited via email to apply. It's a very straightforward process. You basically log on to your PCB account. That's the account that you used when setting up this training. It's the same username and password. And you basically fill in what is essentially an online form where you'll confirm your contact details and then provide some information about your professional experience. Now this is structured very similar to an online job application form. And when we ask about professional experience, just to be clear, we do not need anybody to divulge company secrets and so forth. I remember on one training course somebody said, I can't fill that in because everything I do at work is classified. Well we don't need to know anything about classified or top secret projects or anything like this We just need a summary. So if you said, you know, I'm an information security manager at Organization X, my typical duties over the last five years have included. you're conducting risk assessments, scheduling audits, whatever might that might be, that's what you would describe in your application form. And the question might be, well, how do you verify this as PCB? Well we asked you at the end of your application form to provide the detail of two referees Referees are individuals who PCB will contact to verify the claimed experience in your application. Referees can be people like uh line managers so your existing manager or supervisor for example previous line managers um if you're self-employed or freelance that could be These people like customers or fellow security professionals who've known you long enough to be able to give you that reference. In other words, people who are in a position to know your experience and are willing to verify you. Now what counts as valid experience according to PCB certification scheme? Well you can see this in this slide here. the professional experience records and we've listed these out to be audit experience and then valid activities within an audit. Now we realise that not everybody who's applying for this certification has worked for a certifying body. However, that's fine because we accept other types of audits. So if you've done internal audits, or second or third party audits, or you performed gap analysis which has a similar skill set or risk assessment activity. these will all be considered to be valid. And then in terms of audit activities, things like planning audits, preparing work documents. actually carrying out aspects of the audits like interviewing people, documenting non-conformities, managing audit programs, all of the things you see on this list are valid experience. If at the point of application you are unsure whether your experience is suitable or not, you can reach out to the PCB certification team online. you will find that extremely helpful and they'll certainly steer you in the right direction and provide you the advice that you need. So when you submit your application The first thing that will happen before PCB examine your application is your two references that I was referring to earlier will then receive emails inviting them to respond. And what is being verified is the work experience that you've claimed in your application and I guess your background So usually the referee will see receive a fairly straightforward questionnaire where they'll be asked things like how long have they known you? Could they verify the experience that's claimed and so forth? It is important to have a conversation with your referees, make sure they're happy first to act as your referees and for them to be aware that this application will be coming. Because PCB will not process the application itself until your referees have responded. You can log into your application at any time and see the status as to whether the referees have responded. But once the referees have responded, PCB will review your application. If there is any issues in terms of missing information or anything like that, please be assured. with the they're not they're not going to just remove your application. They will the certification team will come back to you and explain uh what else is needed if there's any gaps to be plugged But once this is satisfactorily completed, PCB will then reach out to you and basically issue you with your certificate. You'll be able to download your actual certificate from your PCB online account and there is a function on the PCB website where any employer or customer using the unique reference number of your certificate can verify it. Also, there is what's called a credly badge available, so you'll be able to download those so you can advertise your skills on platforms like LinkedIn and so on. so forth and it's only when you obtain that formal certification can you say I am a PCB ISO 27001 lead auditor So let's imagine you've done everything, you've passed your exam, you've got your certification, what happens next? So the good news is you'd be certified as a lead auditor for a period of three years. But there are some requirements that need to be followed in order to keep hold and maintain that certificate. And those are mainly around continuing professional development We want to make sure that our auditors and our professionals are continuing to learn and develop over time. And we'll have a look at in a moment at the amount of what we call CPD hours that you'll need to do each uh each year but basically every year you'd be invited to log on to your PCB platform to submit CPD information. Now just to be clear CPDs can be earned through training and this doesn't have to be PCB training specifically. So let's say you went off and did another course related to information security and let's just say that course was 20 hours that would be 20 CPDs. You can earn CPDs through academic study as well and you can claim a certain percentage through your work experience And other things like voluntary work. So for example, for me I I occasionally do some lectures for my local university, not as a commercial thing, but just as a support things so I can claim a little bit of time for preparing and delivering those. Attending PCB and other webinars and seminars, as long as those are educational in nature, those are also places where you can earn CPDs There is also requirement to pay an annual maintenance fee, and again PCB will inform you about that and invite you to settle. That each year and you agree every year to continue to adhere to the PCB Code of Ethics So when we think about the CPD requirements, we have the table here that lists these out. So the CPD requirements will vary depending on the level you have Essentially obtained. So if you're at auditor level, we require uh 20 CPD hours per year, so 60 over three years, 30 at the lead level, and 60 at the senior lead level. So basically each year, as I've said, you'd be invited to log in and submit that information. Now for me what I do myself, given that I hold a number of certifications, is I have a basically a spreadsheet And every time I do something like attending a course, attending a seminar, doing anything that would earn CPD points I basically record in that spreadsheet for the year, the date, the activity, who I did that activity with, and I also keep in a folder any evidence of that, so any attendance certificates or completion of exams, etc. And the reason for that is when you go on the PCB website and submit this information, you can submit supporting evidence. And it's important to point out that anything that you submit here PCB as a professional certification body can ask to see the evidence. It is important that you keep accurate records here. And if you do that during the year, for me, it makes life so much easier when you come to do the online submit. of CPDs, it should be a very short and straightforward process. So with all of that in mind, let's imagine you've got your lead auditor, you're maintaining it, everything's really good. What about the future? What about um where you go from here and I just wanted to take the opportunity to introduce you to a couple of other things that might be interesting from a PCB perspective. So although you have learned in this course all the skills of being a lead auditor, let's imagine that you're kind of doing this job for real, so to speak. and you're invited to go and perform an audit in a specific environment and you want to get familiar with a particular skill or activity. Let's say for example you're going to review privacy impact assessments. Let's just say for this example that's something that's new to you. So you might want to learn about how to do that, but but not necessarily want to go on a full-blown course to do it. Well that's where the new online learning platform called PCB Skills can be very useful. So PCB Skills is an online learning platform where you can study what's called capsules which are 15 minutes long. uh to teach you a very specific skill in an area of information security, privacy, AI, basically digital trust. If you do four of those capsules, that counts as one hour and essentially you have completed what's called a module. For every module you complete, you can earn a CPD certificate. to maintaining your certification. At the moment there's over 500 videos in PCB skills and basically What Ups is it's a good way of having access to rich content to continue your learning after this course. So as you work your way through through the content in PCB Skills, as I've said, for each hour you can earn one CPD credit and if you do an entire um set of competencies you can s essentially obtain what's called an essentials certificate. You will find in the skills platform for 27,001 audit uh skills for every single requirement in ISO 27001. So what you've learnt here you can drill a lot more deeper into in these skills capsules As well as PCB skills, of course you might want to have access to things like standards, toolkits, books and so forth, and that's where the PCB store can help you. So I would always encourage you if you're looking for anything like that. To take a look at the PCB store online. And lastly, here, although you've completed a lead auditor, you might be interested in other ISO 27001 related training So there is what we call the ISO 27001 Lead Implementer course. Lead implementer, of course, is teaching you how to approach the building, design and implementation of an ISMS. So looking at it from the the other perspective and a lot of our professionals do both lead implement and lead auditor to get the full picture And if you're interested in learning more about risk, which we talked about during this course, there is also the ISO 2705 Lead Risk Manager, which really focuses on into the risk management process, how to conduct an effective risk management and tells the complete story end-to-end in this case. So these are all other things you can consider, but I hope this has been useful and really given you a good overview of how to go forward to take the exam, to become a lead auditor, and all the things you can consider afterwards So I'd just like to take the opportunity to thank you for engaging in this lead auditor course. I certainly hope it's been useful. We wish you the very best in the exam and your career going forward.