The Federal IT Security Professional FITSP Certification is being administered by the Federal IT Security Institute. Its mission is to help secure the nation's federal information systems by certifying that federal workforce members understand and can apply appropriate federal IT security standards. The FITSP program is broken into the four separate roles, which are manager, operator, designer and auditor. This product covers the first two. Manager and Operator are supposed to be different in that one focuses on management and another on implementation. HOWEVER, they are practically sharing many of the knowledge areas. In fact, experience shows that clear-cut boundaries between the involved topics can hardly be established. Studying on a role-by-role basis may save you time, but the coverage received may not be sufficient for clearing the exam. In fact it may be a way better approach for you to go through everything included in this guide as a whole, rather than to restrict your focus on the role specific topics (when they overlap so much you better play safe). The FITSP certification contents are based on the NIST material. The NIST material covers knowledge that are the mainstream common standards in use today. Still, NIST / OMB specific topics are always of primary focus. When we develop our material we do not classify topics the BOK way. We follow our own flow of instructions which we think is more logical for the overall learning process. Don't worry, it does not hurt to do so, as long as you truly comprehend the material. To succeed in the exams, you need to read as many reference books as possible. There is no single book that can cover everything! You also need to have real world experience. In fact, many of the concepts presented are "common-sense" to those who actually work in the field. The book is NOT intended to guide you through every single official topic. You should therefore use this book together with other reference books for the best possible preparation outcome.