Certification > Clouds and Containers > Istio Certified Associate (ICA)
CERTIFICATION

Istio Certified Associate (ICA)

Own microservices like a pro. Prove your edge in securing, scaling, and managing microservices—plus, show you’re fluent in the service mesh tech cloud native teams rely on every day with the Istio certification, originally developed by Tetrate.

You have three ways to purchase!

– Certification only – $250
– Certification + Companion Course (LFS245) – $299
– Certification + Subscription (unlimited access to e-Learning + SkillCreds) – $495

PLEASE NOTE: The ICA exam is changing! The exam will be offline from July 28, 2025 00:00 UTC through August 12, 2025 00:00 UTC. If you wish to test on the CURRENT curriculum, you must schedule to take the ICA exam before July 28, 2025 00:00 UTC. Please review more information about the changes on this page. When administration of the exam resumes on August 12, 2025, any ICA exams taken will test on the new curriculum.

Who Is It For
The ICA is a pre-professional certification designed for engineers, CI/CD practitioners or anyone with special interests in Istio.
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About This Certification
A certified ICA will confirm their foundational knowledge of Istio principles, terminology, and best practices and demonstrate their ability to set up Istio.
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What It Demonstrates
The ICA demonstrates a candidate's solid understanding of Istio principles, terminology, and best practices to set up Istio.
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Domains & Competencies
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Istio Installation, Upgrade & Configuration7%
Using the Istio CLI to install a basic cluster
Customizing the Istio installation with the IstioOperator API
Using overlays to manage Istio component settings
Traffic Management40%
Controlling network traffic flows within a service mesh
Configuring sidecar injection
Using the Gateway resource to configure ingress and egress traffic
Understanding how to use ServiceEntry resources for adding entries to internal service registry
Define traffic policies using DestinationRule
Configure traffic mirroring capabilities
Resilience and Fault Injection20%
Configuring circuit breakers (with or without outlier detection)
Using resilience features
Creating fault injection
Securing Workloads20%
Understand Istio security features
Set up Istio authorization for HTTP/TCP traffic in the mesh
Configure mutual TLS at mesh, namespace, and workload levels
Advanced Scenarios13%
Understand how to onboard non-Kubernetes workloads to the mesh
Troubleshoot configuration issues
Exam Details & Resources
This exam is an online, proctored, performance-based and multiple-choice exam.
About the ICA
Originally developed and maintained by Tetrate, the ICA is designed for anyone who has a hand in enhancing the performance, reliability and security of applications, particularly in cloud native, Kubernetes-based container orchestration systems. It helps with managing many of the complexities associated with service-to-service communication and provides a unified way to manage and secure these interactions.
Prerequisites
There are no pre-requisites for this exam.
Reviews
Feb 2025
Great to have hands-on experience and access to the documentation at the same time. This is the closest you get to real life situations.
Oct 2025
The competencies are well-covered. I think the exam questions are a great indication of what you might expect to configure if you use Istio regularly. Maybe adding a question about telemetry/observability could be good, like using the telemetry api to enable access logs or collect traces.
Sep 2024
All of the Linux Foundation exams are fantastic - the hands-on experience really drives home the fact that you must understand the material in order to pass the exam.
Aug 2024
The practical exercises were fun, and covered many Istio scenarios that resemble daily activities/problems that could be faced in real workplace environment.
Jun 2024
I generally like performance-based exams. You cannot cheat here, you pass by pure skill.
May 2024
The exam is advanced, it explores all the area of service Mesh technology and is sure a strong addition to the skillsets.
Jan 2024
The exams are more challenging, and I like the Lab-based exams that validate the competency level rather than a Multiple choice question and answer.
ICA + Subscription Bundle

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Includes
Online
Certification Valid for 2 Years
Includes 12 Month Exam Eligibility
One Retake
Performance-based & Multiple Choice Exam
Duration of Exam 2 Hours
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Experience Level: Intermediate
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