When the A+/Net+/Sec+ trifecta were transitioning from "good for life" certifications to CE certifications, I was teaching a lot of CompTIA classes on military bases.
At one particular base, I was teaching Sec+. The class was engaged. They were asking pertinent questions.
At the end of class, their commanding officer handed each one of them a set of burned CDs with the name of a well-known brain dump written in Sharpie on the surface. He told them to memorize the questions and answers and that they would be fine.
I was extremely angry that they were so brazen about cheating. I reported them, even with the risk of losing future work.
There is no place in our industry for cheaters.
This happened at our college as well. My daughter was handed a DVD with a bunch of VCE files on it. She asked me about it - I told her to shred the thing and summarily put a stop to the practice.
I'm know people out there still rely on VCEs to cheat the system.
Part of the problem within the DoD (I guess it's DoW, now?) is the pressure that military members as well as civilian contractors have to pass according to DoD 8570/8740 standards. I distinctly remember two stories where people where required to have Sec+ but were not in jobs even requiring that kind of knowledge (two ladies who did desk phones, one fellow who did surveillance cameras). They all lost their jobs because they could not get the cert in the very short timeframe. This puts a lot of pressure on people to pass an exam, knowledge of which they would not need to do their job effectively, just to keep their job.
I presented this problem directly to Todd Thibodeaux a couple years ago. While he said that CompTIA was working with the DoD to sort it, it was really 'their' problem. He was right, but that doesn't help matters with those that lost their jobs.
It doesn't justify cheating, but it does explain the motivation.
/r
