If there's any chance you'll be enrolling with a certification company which still provides workshop days as a feature of their programme, then you should know about these hassles reported by most trainees:

- Many round trips - usually hundreds of miles at a time.

- Monday to Friday availability for workshops is typically the case, and with 2-3 days to book off work, this is usually problematic for most working students.

- Lost holiday days - most students only get 4 weeks annual leave. If you give up at least half to your training workshops, that doesn't leave much holiday time left for the family as a whole.

- Because of the cost involved, a lot of schools fill the classes up to the brim - not really ideal (and much less personal).

- Maybe you like to work at a pace that is different to the other class members. Sometimes this causes the tension often found in classrooms.

- You can't overlook the added financial outlay of driving and over-night bed and breakfast either. This can run to 00's or even 000's extra. Do the maths yourself - you may be surprised.

- Study privacy will be of paramount importance to a lot of students. Why give up any lift up the ladder, pay-rises or achievement at your current job just because you're retraining. When your boss discovers you're taking steps towards qualification in another area entirely, what are they going to be thinking?

- Asking questions in the presence of other class-mates often makes us feel nervous. Ever avoided asking a question just because you didn't want to look foolish?

- Where students have to at times live away for part of the week, consider the added problems of getting to the necessary classes, when time-off becomes even harder to obtain.

Surely it makes much more sense to learn at your convenience - not your training provider's - and exploit videos of instructors with interactive virtual-lab's. Imagine... Using a notebook PC you can learn in the garden, a park, or just outside. And live 24 hr-a-day support is an online click away in case of difficulty. It really doesn't matter how regularly you feel you need to repeat something, on-screen tutors are never going to run out of patience! Plus, as a consequence, note-taking is a thing of the past. It's all there for you to use. Although this can't completely stop any normal learning difficulties, it unquestionably vastly reduces stress and simplifies things. You've also got less hassle, travel and costs.

When was the last time you considered how safe your job is? For the majority of us, this isn't an issue until something goes wrong. But really, the reality is that job security doesn't really exist anymore, for most of us. Wherever we find escalating skills deficits together with escalating demand of course, we always hit upon a newly emerging type of security in the marketplace; driven by the conditions of constant growth, employers find it hard to locate the number of people required.

With the computing industry for example, the last e-Skills analysis showed a skills gap around the country of over 26 percent. Basically, we can only fill three out of every 4 jobs in the computer industry. This single idea on its own clearly demonstrates why Great Britain urgently requires so many more new trainees to become part of the IT sector. With the market developing at such a speed, is there any other sector worth considering for a new future.

Make sure you don't get caught-up, as a lot of students can, on the certification itself. You're not training for the sake of training; you should be geared towards the actual job at the end of it. Stay focused on what it is you want to achieve. It's unfortunate, but a large percentage of students begin programs that seem marvellous from the prospectus, but which provides the end-result of a job that is of no interest. Talk to many university leavers for a real eye-opener.

Never let your focus stray from what you want to achieve, and formulate your training based on that - avoid getting them back-to-front. Keep your eyes on your goals and begin studying for a job that will keep you happy for many years. Have a chat with someone that understands the work you're contemplating, and is able to give you a detailed description of what tasks are going to make up a typical day for you. Establishing this long before starting out on a training course has obvious benefits.

Digital (or Computer) Forensics is comparatively new on the scene - TV programmes such as Crime Scene Investigation might have familiarised us with the term. There might however be a tad less glamour regarding the actual work when compared with that done by the actors on our screens! Nevertheless, technological forensics provides an intriguing job for many people right now. The work involves seeking and interpreting 'digital footprints' to assist with data recovery or legal investigations.

In a comparable sector to Forensics & I.T. Security comes 'Ethical Hacking' - another comparatively new discipline to regulate criminal offences. These are certifications offered by the EC-Council which teach advanced students the more dark concepts of hacking - but with the objective of using these skills to safeguard and increase the security of a system, instead of harming it.

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