What Is CIT?

What the Acronym Means on This Site

Search for "CIT" and you will find several unrelated credentials and job titles sharing those three letters. On this site, CIT means exactly one thing: Certified Intrusion Technician Level II, a certification offered through the Electronic Security Association (ESA) and its National Training School. Everything below describes that credential and nothing else. If you landed here looking for a different CIT, the details on fees, exams, and renewal will not transfer.

Certified Intrusion Technician Level II is aimed at technicians who already work with alarm and intrusion systems and want a recognized step up from entry-level certification. It signals deeper competence in intrusion system design, power, inputs and outputs, commissioning, and the networking fundamentals that modern security panels increasingly depend on. For related background, see our explainers on what CIT certification is and what CIT stands for.

How the Credential Is Built: Courses Plus Experience

The most important thing to understand about CIT Level II is its structure. It is not one big exam. There is no standalone CIT examination in the published pathway, and no unified, weighted CIT exam blueprint. Instead, the credential is earned by combining three things:

1. A qualifying prerequisite certification: an active ESA Certified Alarm Technician Level I (or higher) or an ESA/accredited equivalent certificate.
2. Verified experience: 24 months of documented industry work history, or at least 24 months holding the qualifying Level I credential.
3. Two required additional courses: Advanced Intrusion Systems (AIS) and Fundamentals of Networking, both completed within the previous five years.

Finally, you submit a certification request with supporting documentation. The Level I prerequisite is distinct from the two additional courses; completing Level I does not count as completing AIS or Networking.

The Advanced Intrusion Systems Course and Its Proctored Exam

AIS is the heavyweight of the two components and the only one with a formal proctored examination. According to the ESA course listings, the AIS exam specifications are:

Two cautions. First, the course instruction hours are not an exam timer; the exam itself is two hours. Second, ESA does not publicly disclose the scored versus unscored question split or a candidate pass rate, so any pass-rate figure you see quoted elsewhere is not an official number. Our CIT pass rate article covers what can and cannot be said about results.

The open-book format does not make the exam trivial. With 50 questions in two hours you have roughly two and a half minutes per item, which is enough to look something up but not enough to learn the material on the fly. Candidates who know where concepts live in the manual, and who already understand them, finish comfortably. Those who plan to read the manual during the test tend to run short on time. For a deeper look at difficulty, read how hard the CIT exam is.

The Fundamentals of Networking Course

The networking component is a four-hour course covering seven published subjects, from what a network is through the steps of troubleshooting network problems. It finishes with a short terminal quiz that requires a 70% or higher to pass.

What we do not know from public listings: the quiz's question count, item format, or numerical timer. It would be a mistake to assume it mirrors AIS, so do not assume 50 questions, open-book rules, or proctoring for the networking quiz. The four hours describes course instruction time, not a test duration.

The Sixteen Published Topic Areas

ESA publishes nine topics for AIS and seven subjects for Fundamentals of Networking. Our site organizes these into sixteen domains for study purposes. Be clear about what that means: these are unweighted course-preparation topics, not official exam percentages, and they are not a published sixteen-domain examination specification. No domain can be called the "largest," and any practice-question allocation on our platform is editorial. The full breakdown lives in our CIT exam domains guide.

The Nine Advanced Intrusion Systems Topics

The Seven Fundamentals of Networking Subjects

Note that the paid course manual text and any detailed hidden syllabus were not available in the public sources we reviewed. Treat these headings as a map of what to learn, not a guarantee of every question you will see.

Eligibility, Fees, and the Certification Request

Eligibility is gated by three checks: an active qualifying Level I-or-higher credential, 24 months of verified industry work or 24 months holding that Level I credential, and the two required courses completed within five years. Our CIT requirements guide walks through documentation in more detail.

ESA publishes the following course pricing:

The existing-prerequisite route applies when you already hold the qualifying Level I credential and only need the two additional courses. If an exam attempt does not go your way, ESA's FAQ lists a $135 retake fee, and the exam process runs inside a six-month testing window. For a fuller picture of spend versus payoff, see the CIT certification cost breakdown and the ROI analysis.

Validity and Renewal

CIT Level II is valid for 24 months. To renew, you complete 24 CEU hours per two-year period and submit an application with the renewal fee. The current renewal fee amount has not been verified from public sources, so confirm it with ESA before budgeting. These renewal and experience periods are administrative requirements, not exam durations. Mixing them up with the two-hour AIS exam is a common point of confusion.

Where the Credential Fits in the Field

CIT Level II is a technician-level credential for people working in electronic security and alarm contracting. The employers that value it are typically alarm and security integrators, low-voltage contractors, and companies that install and service commercial and residential intrusion systems. For these employers, the credential documents that a technician has moved past basic installation into advanced systems, commissioning, and networked equipment.

We deliberately avoid quoting salary numbers because no verified earnings figure is tied to this specific credential in the sources we reviewed. Our CIT salary guide and CIT jobs page discuss career positioning in qualitative terms.

Sequencing Your Preparation Around the Topics

Rather than a generic schedule, order your study by dependency. Electronics and power underpin inputs, outputs, and commissioning, so they come first. Networking knowledge supports the AIS communication domain, so it pays to finish the networking course before or alongside that part of AIS.

Use our CIT practice tests to rehearse the pace of 50 multiple-choice questions under a two-hour limit, and keep the CIT cheat sheet handy for last-minute review. Remember that our practice-question allocation is editorial; it is built to cover the published topics, not to mirror hidden exam weights. When you are ready to test yourself, head to the main practice test site.

Frequently Asked Questions