- Global cybersecurity spending is expected to reach trillions through 2025. This makes the cybersecurity industry a great space in which to pursue jobs.
- Entry-level cybersecurity certifications from Microsoft, ISACA, CompTIA, GIAC and (ISC)2 can help you prove your prowess to potential employers.
- You can use study guides, flashcards and practice exams to prepare for your exam. Registering for your test may cost several hundred dollars.
- This article is for anyone interested in entry-level cybersecurity jobs.
Looking for a career change? There’s no better time to consider a career in cybersecurity. U.S. businesses and government agencies are spending billions of dollars annually to protect their data and assets from malicious attacks. In fact, according to the 2022 Official Cybercrime Report by Cybersecurity Ventures, global cybersecurity spending will total $1.75 trillion between 2021 and 2025.
With the demand for qualified security professionals soaring, certification is a logical way to verify your skills and knowledge and get your resume noticed. We’ll highlight five certifications to help launch your cybersecurity career and offer test preparation tips.
Entry-level cybersecurity certifications
The following cybersecurity certifications are excellent ways to firm up your skill set and bolster your resume for hiring managers seeking to attract and retain the best employees.
1. Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals
The Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals certification is one of the most “entry-level” certifications we’re highlighting. Aimed at students, business users and IT professionals, this cert recognizes knowledge of numerous cybersecurity topics, including general Microsoft 365 and Azure. It also recognizes general IT knowledge or work experience and familiarity with cloud and networking computing concepts. To achieve certification, you must pass a single exam, which costs $99.
To Excellerate your chances of achieving this certification, Microsoft recommends using its self-paced Microsoft Learn content. Microsoft also suggests attending instruction events, taking practice exams and shadowing people who work in security, compliance, and identity management.
Did you know?: Microsoft certifications include numerous options for network engineers, security engineers and security operations analysts.
2. ISACA Cybersecurity Fundamentals
Folks in the security industry know ISACA for such long-running certificates as its Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and similar certifications – all of which grant intermediate to advanced credentials. They’re designed for IT professionals who want to help prevent and avoid network security threats and vulnerabilities.
The Cybersecurity Fundamentals certificate is designed to fill the entry-level niche. This certificate covers four cybersecurity-related domains:
- Threat landscape
- Information security fundamentals
- Securing access
- Security operations and response
The single test costs $150 for ISACA members and $199 for nonmembers. The certificate doesn’t expire or require periodic recertification.
3. CompTIA Security+
Perhaps the most well-known entry-level security certification is the CompTIA Security+, which covers a wide array of security and information assurance topics, including:
- Network security
- Threats and vulnerabilities
- Access controls
- Cryptography
- Risk management principles
- Application, host and data security
The certification meets U.S. Department of Defense Directive 8570.01-M requirements – an essential item for anyone looking to work in IT security for the federal government – and complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act.
CompTIA recommends that candidates have two years of relevant experience and achieve the Network+ credential before taking the Security+ exam. At $392, this test lands roughly midway between the least and most expensive compared to other entry-level certifications. The Security+ certificate leads to such jobs as security administrator, systems administrator and network engineer, among others.
Tip: CompTIA is known for its vendor-neutral certification program. In general, CompTIA certifications are grouped according to skill set and focus on real-world skills all IT professionals need.
4. GIAC Information Security Fundamentals (GISF)
GIAC gears the GISF certification toward system administrators, managers and information security officers who need a solid overview of computer networks, security policies, incident response and cryptographic principles.
The GISF test is considered to be more challenging than the CompTIA Security+ exam. GIAC certification exams in general require test takers to apply knowledge and problem-solving skills, so hands-on experience gained through training or on-the-job experience is recommended.
The GISF test costs $949. Although GIAC includes two practice exams in the certification-attempt package, this test price is exceptionally high.
After achieving the GISF, consider pursuing the GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC), an intermediate-level certification that takes a big step beyond foundational information security concepts.
Tip: Check out our picks for the best business continuity and disaster recovery certifications to help you learn to recover systems after a disaster.
5. (ISC)2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP)
The (ISC)2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is probably the most recognizable and popular security certification today. But (ISC)2 offers several other security-related certifications, with the ANSI-accredited SSCP filling the entry-level slot.
The SSCP prepares you for such jobs as security analyst, network security engineer and security administrator, which typically start at the junior level if you don’t already have technical or engineering-related information technology experience.
To achieve the SSCP, you must pass a single test that includes questions that span seven common body of knowledge (CBK) domains:
- Access Controls
- Security Operations and Administration
- Risk Identification, Monitoring and Analysis
- Incident Response and Recovery
- Cryptography
- Network and Communications Security
- Systems and Application Security
To ensure that you have sufficient hands-on security knowledge before taking the exam, (ISC)2 recommends that you attend training courses or conference workshops, participate in webinars, and read white papers and books.
The test costs $2,490, and (ISC)2 offers a variety of study resources for purchase on its website.
Did you know?: Many additional niche cybersecurity certifications can help you advance your IT career. For example, you can also achieve big data certifications, digital forensics certifications, computer hardware certifications and networking certifications.
Preparing for your exams
Regardless of which certification is the best fit for you, be prepared to devote ample self-study time to the effort. Many test takers prefer to use a top-rated study guide along with some practice exams and flashcards when preparing for a certification exam.
If your learning style leans more toward formal, instructor-led training, factor the costs and required time into your plans. Although training costs vary by certification, they typically run from $400 to over $5,000, depending on whether you choose online, virtual classroom or in-classroom delivery.
Cybersecurity certifications can help you navigate your career path
Entry-level certifications are an excellent way to begin, Excellerate or navigate your career path as an IT professional. Pursuing and achieving IT certifications helps you demonstrate a willingness to learn while developing the in-demand career skills your employers – and future employers – want.
Max Freedman contributed to the reporting and writing in this article.
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With its extensive set of tools and features for improving productivity and collaboration, Microsoft 365 is being widely adopted by organizations worldwide.
This book will help not only developers but also business people and those working with information to discover tips and tricks for making the most of the apps in the Microsoft 365 suite.
The Microsoft 365 Fundamentals Guide is a compendium of best practices and tips to leverage M365 apps for effective collaboration and productivity. You'll find all that you need to work efficiently with the apps in the Microsoft 365 family in this complete, quick-start guide that takes you through the Microsoft 365 apps that you can use for your everyday activities. You'll learn how to boost your personal productivity with Microsoft Delve, MyAnalytics, Outlook, and OneNote. To enhance your communication and collaboration with teams, this book shows you how to make the best use of Microsoft OneDrive, Whiteboard, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. You'll also be able to be on top of your tasks and your team's activities, automating routines, forms, and apps with Microsoft Planner, To-Do, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Microsoft Forms.
By the end of this book, you'll have understood the purpose of each Microsoft 365 app, when and how to use it, and learned tips and tricks to achieve more with M365.
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The persistent popularity of work-from-home well after the height of the COVID pandemic has complicated the outlook for office buildings. While most office-using employees go into offices at least a few times a week, the days of companies having the majority of employees in offices five days a week seem at an end. There has been some notable pushback and outliers to this, but hybrid work seems here to stay.
That has created a muddy outlook for the office sector. This piece explores responses to WMRE’s latest exclusive research on the state of office fundamentals. A previous story examined investor sentiment.
For the first time in the eight years the survey has been conducted, a plurality of respondents (48.6 percent) said they expected occupancy rates for office buildings to drop in the next 12 months. While sentiment was far from bullish in 2020 and 2021, a majority of respondents in those years still thought occupancies would rise (56 percent and 64 percent, respectively). This year the figure dropped to 46.7 percent.
Rising sublease inventory is complicating matters for owners. Overall, about two-thirds of respondents said the amount of sublease space is increasing somewhat (49.1 percent) or dramatically (17.0 percent). Another 23.6 percent said the level of sublease inventory is unchanged, while 8.5 percent said it is decreasing somewhat.
Just less than one third of respondents (29.3 percent) also believe there is too much development of office properties in their regions. About half of respondents (46.2 percent) think the right amount of development is occurring. The figures are roughly in line with previous years, although the number of respondents concerned about overdevelopment is at the highest level in the eight years the survey has been conducted. Reinforcing that sentiment, nearly 40 percent of respondents (37.5 percent) said their markets could absorb less than 5 percent of additional supply based on current market inventory.
In addition, just more than half of respondents (52.4 percent) believe office rents will rise in the next year. That’s down from 53.4 percent in 2021 and 67 percent in 2020. In all surveys prior to the pandemic, typically more than 70 percent of respondents thought office rents would rise.
Another sign of the sector’s challenges is the lack of demand from industries that had been big occupiers of office space in past years. When asked to rate companies were the most active tenants on a scale of one to five, respondents gave no option more than a score of three. In past years, tech firms were ranked as the most active tenants. But this year’s survey reflects what’s been occurring in the broader market the past year with many tech firms conducting mass layoffs and reducing office footprints.
The survey has also attempted to gauge how the emergence of co-working spaces and the increase in telecommuting is affecting the sector.
A plurality of respondents (35.2 percent) said co-working has been a mild net negative, while 11.4 percent said it has been a significant net negative. An additional 25.7 percent said co-working has not been a factor and 21.0 percent said co-working has been a mild net positive. All of those results are in line with responses to that question in the prior three surveys it was asked.
The sentiment on telecommuting, however, has shifted dramatically. In the 2019 and 2020 surveys, fewer than 10 percent of respondents said telecommuting was leading to a significant decrease in the amount of space their tenants needed. But in 2021 that number jumped to 28.7 percent and hit 34.3 percent in the most latest survey.
When asked specifically about tenants in their buildings, 60.4 percent said employers are using a hybrid model, with only 22.8 percent bringing their staffs back five days a week. (Notably, that figure is up from 12.4 percent a year ago.) Overall, a plurality of respondents (37.8 percent) said their buildings are between 51 percent and 75 percent capacity on a daily basis.
In terms of office layouts, there’s also been a marked swing in sentiment. Prior to COVID, open-office plans predominated. In the 2019 and 2020 surveys, about half of respondents said they were seeing more open-office plans and fewer than 10 percent said they were seeing traditional layouts. About 30 percent said the split was even. During the pandemic there was some speculation that tenants might move to different types of layouts. In fact, in the 2021 survey, more than one-fifth of respondents said tenants were opting for traditional plans and those saying they were seeing more open offices dropped to 34 percent. But in the most latest survey, there’s been a hard swing back. Now, 56.2 percent say they are seeing more open-office plans and only 7.6 percent say they are seeing more traditional office layouts.
The uncertainty in the sector is translating to lease lengths. More than half of respondents in this year’s survey (50.5 percent) said average office leases are becoming shorter. That’s up from 42 percent in 2021.
Office tenants are also downsizing. More than 70 percent of respondents said office tenants in general are asking for less space—a jump from 57.5 percent who said that in 2021 and 52 percent in 2020. Just 5.6 percent of respondents said tenants are asking for more space. In addition, when asked about existing tenants, 39.2 percent of respondents said their tenants are decreasing the amount of space they are leasing.
On balance, 78.6 percent of respondents said more than half of their tenants with expiring leases are renewing. In fact, 12.2 percent of respondents said all of their tenants are renewing. Both of those figures are up from 65.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively, in the 2021 survey.
Among non-renewing tenants, most respondents believe tenants are relocating either to smaller spaces (57.4 percent) or newer buildings (22.3 percent). Others are relocating from CBD to suburban offices (11.7 percent). Only 16.0 percent of respondents said non-renewing tenants are closing their offices entirely. Other responses included moving to larger spaces (8.5 percent), moving to a new office market entirely (6.4 percent) or moving from a suburban office to one in a CBD (4.3 percent).
During the pandemic, there was some thought that tenants might de-densify offices. But that has not come to fruition. In 2021, there was a roughly even split when among respondents saying tenants were increasing space per employee (32.1 percent) vs. decreasing space (24.4 percent). (An additional one third said there was no change.) In 2022, only 17.5 percent of respondents said tenants were increasing square footage per employee vs. 37.9 percent who said tenants were decreasing space (37.9 percent). An additional 35 percent said there has been no change in density.
One positive for landlords is that fewer tenants are asking for rent relief. This year, 39.6 percent of respondents said no tenants asked for relief—that’s double the figure from 2021’s survey. Another 42.5 percent said fewer than 25 percent of their tenants had requested relief. Further, owners say they have largely not been granting those relief requests. Just less than one-third of respondents (31.7 percent) said they have not granted any relief, while another 39.7 percent said they have granted fewer than 25 percent of the relief requests.
Survey methodology: The WMRE research report on the office real estate sector was completed via online surveys distributed in October and November of 2022. The survey yielded 107 responses. Half of respondents (50 percent) hold the titles of owner, partner, president, chairman, CEO or CFO. The results from the current research were compared against prior studies completed between 2015 and 2021.
Jean-Luc Ichard
With Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) fiscal Q3 '23 financial results scheduled to be released on Tuesday, January 24th, 2023, after the market close, investors will get their first look at the SP 500 mega-cap's earnings results for the December '22 quarter.
Microsoft still comprises 5.4% of the SP 500's market cap as of Friday, January 20, 2023 and is the 2nd largest stock in the SP 500 by market cap in the SP 500, behind only Apple.
Sell-side consensus expectations for the fiscal Q2 '23 quarter for the enterprise-software giant are for $2.30 in EPS on $52.9 billion in revenue for expected year-over-year (y.y) growth of -7% and 2% respectively.
That represents a significant slowing from the fiscal 2021 and 2022 pace, all of which could already be discounted in the stock price.
Full-year fiscal '23 estimates today expect Microsoft to earn $9.55 in EPS on $212.2 billion in revenue for expected growth in the next 6 months of 4% in EPS and 7% in revenue.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO said two weeks ago that the slowdown would likely last another 2 years, however the interesting aspect to that is that sell-side estimates expect a return to double digit, mid-teens EPS and revenue growth by fiscal 2024 (starts July 1 '23.)
One metric I've watched over the year for Microsoft is the comparison between revenue growth and operating income growth. This provides an interesting take on pre-Covid growth, what happened during the pandemic and then the return to more normal growth rates since the pandemic:
MSFT TTM rev vs TTM operating income (valuation spreadsheet )
Peak revenue in late '21 was 21% revenue growth vs 31% operating growth. Obviously, this is now in the process of returning to a more-normal growth rate.
Microsoft by segment
Microsoft by segment (Valuation spreadsheet / earnings reports )
The importance of this table shows the growth in Intelligent Cloud (IC), the primary product of which is Azure.
If this spreadsheet were expanded to reach back to the start of the last decade or 2010 to 2104, readers would see that the Intelligent Cloud was just 20% or less of total revenue and operating income when the last decade started.
Obviously, readers can see the growth in the IC since.
When the September '22 quarter was reported in early November '22, MSFT reported +42% growth in Azure and then guided to +36% - +37% for the December '22 quarter for the key cloud product.
In addition, bookings in the Sept '22 quarter fell to +16%, versus the +35% in the June quarter of '22.
MSFT valuation
Part of the longer-term problem is that the stock never looks cheap. Trading around $240 per share coming into earnings, MSFT sports a 25x multiple for expected 4% EPS growth in fiscal '23.
The "average" PE looking 3 years out from '23 is around 18x, so the stock is trading closer to 1x PEG looking at '24 - '27 EPS estimates, with mid-teens revenue growth, but that's assuming the Intelligent Cloud segment and Azure can sustain the present growth rates.
MSFT does have a 4% free-cash-flow yield and the ability to repurchase an enormous amount of stock, with the stock trading down $100 per share since its peak in 2021 at $345. But management likely won't do that and the dividend will continue to grow nicely at its 10% annual clip, although with a yield of just over 1% the dividend yield isn't meaningful.
However, the dividend as a % of FCF dollars is now below 30% - MSFT could hike the dividend to a greater degree, or like they did in 2002, pay-out a special dividend, but that is unlikely. Before Ballmer left, he said the special dividend payout was - in Microsoft's terms - a poor use of capital.
Summary/conclusion
Expectations are very subdued coming into MSFT's fiscal Q2 '23 earnings release on Tuesday night, January 24, 2023. That's always a plus, but personally, I expect an inline quarter and rather subdued guidance since that has been the posture of Satya Nadella the last few months.
It seems unusual that Satya Nadella would say two weeks ago that the growth slowdown would last 2 years, and then be optimistic on the call Tuesday night.
However, the fall in the dollar in the 4th quarter of '22 should help MSFT at the margin, as well as the rest of large-cap tech. This blog post from December 26th '22 showed how large-cap tech companies were impacted by the unusually strong dollar in calendar '22 and Microsoft was no exception.
Microsoft saw a 500-bp headwind from the strong buck in the Sept '22 quarter.
The other positive for MSFT is that for calendar '23 financial results face easier compares from the strong demand driven spike in fiscal '21 and then early fiscal '22. The December '21 compare is actually not that difficult, while it is a tough compare for larger mega-cap tech companies.
In the September '22 quarter MSFT caught some grief from analysts after lowering depreciation expense by extending the useful life of some servers, which is a quality of earnings issue, but given MSFT's cash and free-cash-flow generation, it's worth noting but not a serious issue.
MSFT is still a large holding for clients, but I'm not expecting much in the quarter or from guidance. The fact is expectations have come down so much for the software giant, I think the stock could outperform after getting shellacked in 2022: MSFT fell 28% in 2022 versus the SP 500's 18% decline, however, I do not believe that this market environment is a replay of 2000 to 2002, when the Nasdaq fell 80%.
Morningstar still sports a $320 fair value on the stock. Leaving MSFT at a bigger discount to intrinsic value than it's probably traded at in the last few years.
Watch Azure guidance by the Microsoft management team. It will likely be subdued, but it's not expected to be dire, and it's MSFT's most important metric looking forward.
Over the next few weeks post earnings, I'll be watching to see if the 2024 - 2027 EPS and revenue growth rates change negatively.
ABOUT 10 years ago, I helped a young woman from the barrio relocate from a tech job in the US Midwest to a tech job at Silicon Valley, one of the technology giants with campuses in that sprawl of Northern California. She knew I hated traveling and leaving my farm work to others, but her lure was hard to ignore. "Old man, here is your chance to witness the post-First World employment order first-hand. You can't eternally write about post-First World jobs from a vacuum."
That was 10 years or so ago, before the self-immolation of Elon Musk, the jobs bloodbath at the Valley, the drop in the market caps of the tech giants and ChatGPT.
Indeed, with her "blue pass," everything from food to laundry to bus rides was free 24/7. In the open space where she worked, the pantry had coffee blends from Sumatra to Peru. The freezer was fully stocked with Haagen Dazs,
Ben and Jerry and a dozen other ice cream brands. A huge pile of food containers was in a corner as take-outs were encouraged. During the relocation period, she and her French American husband stayed at a hotel-like building where newly hired workers can stay for a full month (rent-free) while scouting for permanent housing. Immigrants like her who came on H1-B visas were even encouraged to bring their visiting next of kin into the campus for tours — and partake of the freebies.
Still, some things I witnessed in the general environment of Silicon Valley did not sit well with my deeply ingrained sense of country. First and foremost, the bumper stickers of the pricey European cars (the dominance of Teslas was to come later in these campuses ) that tooled in and out of the Valley The bumper stickers carried the names of famous engineering and tech schools in the US and... IIT. IIT Madras, IIT Bangalore, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT ad infinitum.
No bumper stickers saying " UP" or "Ateneo" or "De La Salle" or "UST." Not a single one. During the few days that I was there, the foreign universities represented in the bumper stickers were the many campuses of the Indian Institute of Technology spread across the vastness of India. The creation of an excellent technology and engineering-oriented school for young Indians meant to supply India and the rest of the world with tech and engineering talent was the idea of an unapologetic socialist, Jawaharlal Nehru, and that led to the creation of IIT.
The immense pool of Indian tech talents turned out by an excellent university system is the main driving force behind these:
– At least 15 corporations in the S&P 500 are led by Indian-born CEOs. India-born CFOs, CTOs and CIOs in the same corporate giants are dime a dozen.
– The pool of talents is partly the reason why India toppled Britain from being the 5th largest economy in the world this year.
The former colony bumping off the colonizer, and more, the current prime minister is the son of Indian immigrants.
– In the reconfiguration of the global supply chain that involves companies moving their assembly/manufacturing sites out of China into other locales because of Covid concerns and geopolitical reasons, one of the top five countries of choice for those relocating is India. The movement out of China into India would mean lots and lots of fresh investments via new factory/assembly sites and the complementary job creation. This is on top of India's sustained run as the destination of substantial foreign direct investments.
– Cornering a substantial chunk of FDI year after year.
Which has been the elusive dream of a succession of Philippine governments, that reached fever peak during the Duterte administration. Which is also the highest dream of the administration of President Marcos Jr.
The lesson from India's limitless pool of highly-educated, highly skilled nomads is this. We are taking the wrong approaches on investment attraction and generation, the Philippines' policy priority.
Our core strategies center on the following. First, we announce to all and sundry that we are open for business. We do plenty of shout-outs to the world at large centered on the thesis that this is a country that warmly welcomes investments.
Second, we do it via legislation and executive fiats. During the Duterte administration, the House of Representatives even passed a draft law that voids all the equity provisions in the Constitution to ensure 100 percent foreign ownership even in patrimonial economic sectors, clearly an illegal and irresponsible move. Some of the core institutions of the polity even assault the Constitution just to proclaim the openness of the country to foreign investments. There is an ongoing Cha-cha hearing by a Congress that has never learned.
We also passed a law on sweeping corporate tax cuts amid diminishing revenue just to attract fresh investments.
In a few years, the corporate tax rate will hit a bottom 20 percent.
The problem is all these legislative and executive efforts never work. Investors will always ask this question: Where are your fundamentals?
The fundamentals that investors require before putting in their investment money have been spelled out clearly by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in talks before finance ministers of the G7 and OECD economies. Legislating investment attraction was not one of them. In fact, Secretary Yellen has railed against the use of massive corporate tax cuts as part of a country's investment attraction strategies. She calls corporate tax cuts via legislation as a "race to the bottom."
According to Yellen, these are the fundamentals sought by investors:
First, good governance; second, a skilled workforce; and third, a culture of innovation.
By fulfilling the second and third requirements through a massive pool of skilled workers trained at the IIT and elsewhere, India has shown the way in these two critical areas. Exporting tech talents that have scaled CEO, CFO, CIO and CTO level. Alphabet and Microsoft are led by Indian-born talent, so was Twitter before Elon Musk's acquisition. Then building cutting-edge tech centers within India itself that has been attracting foreign investments. All the fruits of a good educational system and training world-class tech and engineering talen.
The dear lesson here is this. We can't generate FDI on a massive scale by legislation that says we are open for business.
Or legislation that offers corporate tax cuts. Or, saying over and over again that the Philippines is an investment-friendly country and there is an entire body of laws and rules that say so.
The first step, if we are really serious about attracting investors is this: Excellerate the educational system dramatically.
This will yield a substantial pool of skilled and tech/ engineering-savvy workers. This will eventually lead to a deeply ingrained culture of innovation.
Fulfill these and we won't even need a show horse called Maharlika Investment Fund. We won't even need to network at Davos.
I will paraphrase something from the movie " Field of Dreams." Build an impressive educational system and develop a culture of innovation and the investors will come.
Private foundations offer a robust philanthropic toolkit and are the gold standard for helping families build lasting legacies – but they can be tricky for donors to administer on their own without clear guidance. Join this session with Foundation Source’s Chief Legal Officer Jeffrey Haskell for important insights on the substantive rules that govern private foundations. Learn what activities are permissible, which require advance IRS approval and the most common trouble spots to help your clients steer clear of compliance issues and penalties.
Some of the courses covered will include:
- Employing a family member
- Making scholarship and hardship or disaster relief grants
- Transactions between a foundation and its insiders
- Guidelines for avoiding jeopardizing investments
CFP, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, RMA®, and AEP® CE Credits have been applied for and are pending approval.
Sponsored by
Jeffrey D. Haskell, J.D., L.L.M.
Chief Legal Officer
Foundation Source
Susan Lipp - Moderator
Editor in Chief
Trusts & Estates
Once you’ve designed your electronic product, it’s time to release it to market, right? Well, not exactly. As with any product development, you need to first test the device you’re designing to validate that
it behaves as expected. One such important test that all electronic devices must eventually pass
are EMI (electromagnetic interference) compliance tests. Passing EMI tests demonstrate that your device’s electromagnetic emissions are at an acceptable level, as defined by the respective regulatory body’s standard the device is being tested against.
EMI, or electromagnetic interference, falls under the umbrella term ‘EMC’ which stands for electromagnetic compatibility. When performing pre-compliance tests, you are concerned about testing for EMI which is the genuine phenomena — or emissions — coming from your device.
However, acquiring certification for EMI compliance testing is rather expensive – and in the off chance that you don’t pass — you not only have to rework your design but this will also throw off your product development schedule and cost you a lot of money.
Click here to read more.
We read and hear a lot about “breakthroughs” in our industry: Robots eliminate operators; auto-feeding systems never allow the machine to go dry; snazzy signal processors and transducers monitor every microsecond of the molding process. With all this gadgetry, however, are we seeing more profit and a return on investment for the money spent? Not really, because we have been dazzled by technology and ignored the fundamentals.
Recently, I got an e-mail from a guy who had just taken over the position of lead technician. He wondered about the use of chillers and their expense. He also wondered about the quality of his products when the setup sheet used "tower water" as the main source of cooling for molds and machines.
The trouble with tower water
Let's hit the simple but often overlooked problem first—tower water. When people first build a molding plant, they decide on the number and size of the molding machines and calculate the power and cooling requirements. What they tend to ignore is what happens when additional machines are purchased, because that is covered in the “safety margins” of the original designs.
Heat exchange is necessary because:
- the machine generates its own heat; and
- the mold will heat up because it must cool the 300°+ plastic that is injected into it.
Heated machine oil is cooled directly from the tower. The molten plastic's heat first dissipates into the mold steel, is transferred to the cooling circuits and then to the mold's heat exchanger (generically called a Thermolater, although there are other suppliers) and finally to the tower's evaporative cooling circuits.
Evaporative cooling depends on the evaporation of water. This depends on the outside temperature, relative humidity and a host of other variables. It is obvious that when the outside air changes, the temperature of the tower water also will change. As the tower water's temperature changes, your mold temperature will change, and the dimensions and quality of your parts will change.
Another reason to avoid directly putting tower water in your mold is scale buildup. With water flowing through a mold you have the perfect setup for electrolysis, where the minerals in the water will plate out onto the waterlines. Just 1/64 in. (0.4 mm) of scale buildup can reduce the heat-transfer efficiency of a waterline by 60%, even with adequate flow.
Fun facts about heat distortion temperatures
First fun fact: The ideal ejection temperature for any molded part is when it reaches 80% of the material's heat distortion temperature (HDT). Second fun fact: If you check the literature, no thermoplastic resin's HDT is so low that the 80% figure turns out to be room temperature or lower. There are some practical exceptions: Thin-walled elastomers tend to turn themselves inside out during ejection. If dimensions are not sacrificed, if you “over-cool” the part prior to ejection it can be rigid enough to conventionally eject.
These fun facts beg a simple question: If this is correct, why do we need chillers? You use a chiller in an attempt to overcome inadequate cooling in a mold.
Most molds use a Thermolator to maintain mold temperature so that the part can reach 80% of HDT as efficiently as possible. Keep in mind plastic is a poor conductor of heat. The heat from the plastic radiates relatively slowly into the mold steel. The heat-transfer characteristics of the mold steel and the water in the cooling lines are many times faster.
The weak link in this plastic-metal-water heat-transfer system is the water's flow rate. When water flows smoothly like a gentle stream, it flows in layers: This is called laminar flow. The layer that is in contact with something—the walls of the waterline or the bottom of the stream—will flow very slowly. The water at the top of the stream or the center of the waterline only has to slip past itself and flows must faster. With laminar flow, the heat transfers very slowly because it has to heat up this stationary layer before the flowing layers can pick it up and exit the mold.
The laminar flow effect stops when the flow increases. It ceases to flow in layers and begins to tumble over itself. This is called turbulent flow. With the water tumbling over itself in a waterline, it picks up heat directly from the mold steel. Turbulent flow is measured with a very complex dimensionless number called a Reynolds number that uses flow volume, the size of the flow channel, the heat of the water and the viscosity of the water. Instead of going through the calculus, a rule of thumb is 1 gallon per minute (GPM) per circuit will always supply you turbulent flow in normal molding situations.
Image: Maksim Kabakou/Adobe Stock
You can purchase flow meters cheaply. Hook them in-line and see what you have. The results might surprise you. Here are some examples.
Age: Like everything else, Thermolators and chillers wear out with time. A Thermolator is not something we tend to do maintenance on. First, check your Thermolator's output pressure as stated in its operating manual. In many cases, the pumps are old, tired and incapable of creating enough pressure to pump the needed 1 GPM per circuit. Repair, replace or retire worn-out equipment.
Line resistance: Let’s do a mind experiment—you want to water your front and back lawn at the same time. You only have one faucet in the front of your house. With a T connector, you hook up a 15-foot hose for the front yard and a 75-foot hose to go around your house and into the backyard. You put two identical sprinklers on each hose. Turning on the water, you think equal amounts will go to each yard but you notice the front yard sprinkler is shooting 25+ feet into the air while the backyard sprinkler is only shooting up five feet. You wonder why—the same pressure source should be the same flow. You forgot about the energy it takes to push the water through the longer hose. Water will always take the path of least resistance. Twenty-foot lines from the Thermolator to the mold require the unit to work harder and only make your utility company rich.
Hookups
Figure 1: In the best of all worlds, each cavity has individual cooling with a circuit that goes to the main machine manifold. All pressures and flows are equal.
Figures 2 and 3 show four cavities looped together. The resistance of each baffle will compound on the next, severely impeding flow. Figure 2 shows an external loop; figure 3 shows an internal loop.
Figures 4 and 5 show a ladder loop. You can fall into a productivity trap if it isn't designed well (one of the major excuses to use a chiller). Both figures supply you the illusion of one circuit cooling only two cavities. Figure 4 shows the "in" and "out" at the bottom of the ladder. This is like our mind experiment. The majority of the flow will cool the cavities closest to inlet. It will become less and less the farther away you get from the inlet and outlet. Figure 5 shows the inlet at the bottom and the outlet at the top. While the bottom of the ladder sees a high inlet pressure, it also sees a high resistance to the outlet, thus balancing the flow.
Many molds are built with short and long circuits. Look at the mold designs and designate the circuits that can be looped and what should not be making all the circuits close to the same amount of flow.
How do we document waterline hookups? I've seen photographs (hard to see with more than eight circuits), sketches (hard to read) and descriptions (sometimes hard to do). The best solution is to take from the written description you get for driving directions from your GPS.
In Figure 6 you can see circuit #1 has five loops while circuit #4 is straight through without any loops. It's amazing how techs think they can commit these “waterline maps” to memory. They can't.
Another “flow killer” is so obvious it is sad. If you have more than 15 machines, there is a better than 80% chance you can find at least one pinched-off circuit. You have looped two circuits together with a length of hose that is too short, bending it sharply and pinching it closed.
Follow up—avoiding common mistakes
Have a setup guide available when hanging a mold and have someone:
- Check the hookups;
- make sure the water is turned on; and
- periodically splice a flow meter into the circuits to be sure they aren't clogged and that your pumps are working properly.
Waterline diameter
Realizing how silly this sounds, I have seen large molds cooled with ¼-in.-diameter waterlines. The physics of the Reynolds number and commonsense will tell you a small-diameter waterline and a complex path, or one with several restrictive fountains or bubblers, will require an extremely high pressure to get 1 GPM flow. Good mold design will also tell you a cooling line can only efficiently cool within three diameters of its outer wall.
If you can only remember one thing on the course of cooling a mold, put the Mississippi River through the mold. Temperature is easy to regulate but flow determines the mold's temperature.
Conclusion
Injection molding should be both fun and boring. The fun side comes with psyching out the process to balance everything. All this effort should come when you first run/qualify the mold. If you did your homework properly, the boring part is sitting back and watching the profits roll in.
Epilogue
At the end of a few e-mails, my guy tested and scraped a few worn-out Thermolators. He got the engineer to re-write clearly the process sheets and waterline diagrams. He and his crew went on constant hunts and found pinched off waterlines.
The results:
- Less scrap, higher productivity;
- more consistent outputs;
- less use of utility-eating chillers;
- reduced time invested in troubleshooting.
In other words, more profits for less work.
About the author
Bill Tobin has more than 30 years of hands-on experience in injection molding. Through his company, WJT Associates, he writes articles, presents papers and teaches seminars helping people Excellerate their profits and productivity. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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03:08
Fri, Jan 20 20234:50 PM EST
Eterna Plc surpassed five-year profit generation and migrated from 2021 audited financial year loss to impressive performance in its unaudited financial statement for year ended December 31, 2022.
The impressive 2022 unaudited results came on the backdrop of a significant increase in revenue and a drop in finance cost as the group declared N2.42 billion profit before tax from loss before tax in 2021 and N1.77billion profit after tax in 2022 from N1.1billion loss reported in 2021.
Eterna had posted over N2billion profit in 2017 and till 2021, it announced mixed performances that impacted on its dividend payout to shareholders and stock price appreciation.
The petroleum marketing company in the year under review reported an increase in revenue to N117.46 billion, representing an increase of 43per cent from N82.2billion in 2021.
The group benefited from the increasing demand for petroleum products as foreign and domestic business activities expanded in 2022.
The average retail price paid by consumers for Premium Motor Spirit (Petrol) for December 2022 was N206.19 per litre, indicating a 24.38er cent increase when compared to N165.77 recorded in December 2021, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report.
The average retail price of Automotive Gas Oil (Diesel) paid by consumers in December 2022 was N817.86 per litre, an increase of 182.64per cent from N289.37 per litre recorded in the corresponding month of the previous year, NBS latest report had revealed.
However, the group’s revenue breakdown revealed that Fuel generated N97.277billion in 2022, an increase of 51 per cent from N64.49billion in 2021, while revenue from lubricant rise to N15.51billion in 2022, representing an increase of 1.44 per cent from N15.29billion in 2021.
In addition, revenue from “Trading” dropped by 83 per cent to N183million in 2022 from N1.08billion inn 2021 as “Others” revenue rose significantly by 233 per cent to N4.5billion from N1.35billion reported in 2021.
In terms of cost of sales, Eterna reported N108.34 billion in 2022 unaudited results as against N77.93billlion in 2021 audited result and accounts, brining CoS/Revenue to 92.24per cent in 2022 from 94.8per cent in 2021.
As inflation rate closed the year under review at per cent, the group show its materials cost moving to N107.01 billion in 2022 from N77.05 billion reported in 2021 as Delivery cost rose significantly by 50.06per cent to N1.33 billion in 2022 from N885.46 million in 2021.
The interplay between revenue and cost of sales boosted gross profit to N9.12billioni in 2022 from N4.26billion in 2021 as gross profit margin increased to per cent in 2022 from per cent in 2021.
Despite double-digit inflation rate, the management in the year under review was prudential in managing operating expenses.
The group’s total operating expenses moved to N6.15billion in 2022, representing an increase of 38 per cent from N4.47billion reported in 2021.
The increase in total operating expenses was driven by 20.1 per cent increase in Selling and distribution expenses to N283million in 2022 from N235.66million in 2021 as General and administrative expenses hits NN5.87billion in 2022 from N4.23billion reported in 2021.
The group also announced N250.3million non-core business income in 2022 from N231.63million in 2021, fuelled by rental income.
Furthermore, the group reported N41.05billion interest income on short-term bank deposits in 2022 from N9.09billion in 2021 and reported N1150.65million foreign exchange loss in 2022 from N210.01million foreign exchange gain in 2022.
Eterna also reported N690.67million finance cost in 2022, representing a decline of 51.6per cent from N1.18billion in 2022.
Key contributing factor to decline on finance cost was 52 per cent drop in interest on loan to N491.5million in the year under review from N1.02billion reported in corresponding year.
On the growth in profit, the Group closed 2022 with N1.36 Earnings Per Share (EPS) as against N0.84 loss in 2021 financial year.
Balance sheets emerges stronger amid increasing borrowing
The balance sheet of Eterna in 2022 unaudited financial statement showed stronger assets despite growing short-term borrowing.
The group’s total assets increased to N54.27 billion in 2022 from N46.08billion in 2021, representing an increase of 17.77 per cent. As non-current assets dropped to N14.97billion in 2022 from N15.16billion in 2021 as current assets grew by 27.1 per cent to N39.3billion in 2022 from N30.93billion in 2021.
The group announced N40.38billion total liabilities in 2022 from N33.96billion in 2021. This means that Eterna total liabilities proportion to total assets moved to 74.4per cent in 2022 from 73.7per cent in 2021.
In addition to balance sheet position, Eterna reported drop in non-current liabilities to N1.27billlion in 2022 from N2.33billion in 2021 as current liabilities increased to N39.1billion in 2022, representing an increase of 24 per cent from N31.63billion in reported 2021.
However, total equity increased to N13.89billion in 2022 from N12.12billion reported in 2021.
Remark.
While commenting on the group third quarter ended September 30, 2022 performance, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Eterna, Mr Benjamin Nwaezeigwe had said the growth trajectory was on the back of increased operating activities, improved efficiency, staff dedication and a new energy in the organisation brought about by the vision of the new leadership.
According to him, the company is still committed to actualize its goal to be Africa’s preferred Energy Company while providing efficient energy solutions.
“We will continue to focus on delivering value to our shareholders as we continue to drive the growth and profitability of our business,” he stated
He noted that the company would actively continue to play across the energy value chain covering the production, transportation, and distribution of energy solutions vital for economic growth and development.
