Anyone going to ISESTORM in Barcelona?

Munck

I am thinking of going, sounds great. 6 days of intensive training, and the possibility of taking 3 certs: OPSA, OPST and BS7799 / ISO 27001 Auditor + preparation for CISSP.

What do you think?

http://www.isecom.org/isestorm/

determinedgerman

Would be nice if I had the money, vacation time and if I wasn't married and had no kid and if I still would live in Germany.

Sounds pretty interesting and hopefully I am able to attend something like that in the future. But don't forget when you come back give us a good overview how it was. If you want to put some vacation time on it visit Loret de mar at the costa brava. The whole city has only Bars, Clubs Pubs, Hotels and Restaurants and a nice beach....

simosha

I went along to the first one in Barcelona and picked up my CISSP, BS7799 Lead Auditor and an OPSA, in terms of value for money certainly from the UK you won't get better - you can pay twice as much for a CISSP alone in England. ( The exchange rates help ... )

I believe that the trainers are the same this year as the ones that I had, and they are very entertaining & knowledgeable. They are happy to answer any questions that you might pose and as all are practicing security consultants - they can answer anything - technical or procedureal. You get copies of some quite decent training material - not least OSSTMM 3.0 - which isn't publically released yet - and BS7799/ISO17799 which if you want to buy a copy will set you back a couple of hundred quid.

Moving off the training - the food provided was damn good - there are pastries for breakfast, mid morning and mid afternoon coffee breaks and a hot lunch ( occassionally interesting Spanish combinations ... but good ). Barcelona is stunning when (if ...) you get a chance to look around, and the course location is easy to get to. Point of advice - there are three hotels reccomended on the web site - I stayed in the cheapest ( trying to save some more cash ... ) but the next one up was only a few euros more per night but worlds apart in terms of quality - go for that one.

Oh another good point - if you ask for wine with your meal ( included in price ) they don't mean a glass, they mean a bottle - doesn't make for an easy start the next morning ...

At the end of it all I spent probably £3000 odd pounds all in, but with the qualifications I improved my salary so much as a contractor ( moving from UNIX SA to security ) that I made it back in the first month of work - I've been working non-stop since.

I'd say to go for it !

Si

Munck

simosha,


thanks for sharing your experience with the community. It sounds like you had an awesome trip.

I have registrered for the event, so your advise about hotels etc. should come in handy The next CISSP exam in Denmark is on the 1. july, so I have about 2 months to prepare after the event.

I will let everyone know how it goes when I get back. I have to get the GCFW off my to-do list next week, before I start preparing.

Webmaster

Yeah, thanks for sharing simosha.

Barcelona... been there once, and apart from the maniacs driving their cars, it's a great place to visit.

If you want to put some vacation time on it visit Loret de mar at the costa brava. The whole city has only Bars, Clubs Pubs, Hotels and Restaurants and a nice beach....

Lloret da mar, been there too about 10 years ago. Did they have a beach?

determinedgerman

Johan,

They do have a beach.....I have been there in 1997. I haven't seen much of the beach while I was there. Normally went to bed when I came back from the clubs.....everybody asked me what I did the two weeks i was there. I came back as white as i was when I got there.

Webmaster

Yeah I knew that they have two actually, LLoret Beach and Fanals Beach. I remember from waking up there. But my experience was very similar to what you described. I just checked and I was there in 98, I guess time isn't flying that fast, seems like a decade at least. The good ol' days... I drove 1500 miles to get there.