Xengoreth's WGU BSIT - Sec Thread

xengoreth

C170 performance assessment is in crapstream (since 08-May). I passed the objective assessment for C779 - Web Development Foundations last night. Interestingly, CIW has a third party online proctoring service. I will never acknowledge having any CIW certifications. I think I spent a total of two hours studying for C779.

Hoping to hear back about C170 soon. Next up is C483 - Principles of Management, hopefully this evening. After that, my mentor is forcing me to take C299 - Designing Customized Security next. He insists that this usually takes students four months, which at the end of May will be all I have left in the term.

xengoreth

Knocked out C483 - Principles of Management tonight. It's very easy and nearly anyone should be able to knock this out in under a day (especially with the very low cut score).

I had to resubmit my C170 performance assessment due to a few things that needed to be fixed. I do have to say that this assignment is somewhat unclear and being the first performance assessment I've done, its really taken me a long time. I think I've spent 7-8 hours on it so far (plus a bunch of waiting on crapstream). Hopefully I'll have the results tomorrow morning as I am number 15 in queue at this time.

I am hitting the material hard this weekend for C299 - Designing Customized Security. I am assembling a large selection of materials for the CCNA Security, as I would like to delve further into this track afterward.

xengoreth

OK, here's some notes about how to deal with performance assessments. Don't be like that idiot Xengoreth. When you have a performance assessment (specifically for C170, which the evaluators are notoriously picky about), submit your draft to the CM (Course Mentor). If the CM signs off on it, it's likely to go through Taskstream and be approved the first time.

In most cases you only have four submissions available for a given performance assessment without getting special approval to ever submit again (meaning you may fail the course for the term). The CMs actually do help and give valid, relevant advice on what the evaluators are looking for.

Of course, what I did it submit twice before following the CM's advice and then have a botched evaluation that almost lead to me having to submit a fourth time. Luckily, I was able to escalate it (I had a submission where I got a 3/3 in each category but somehow still mysteriously failed), and engaged my CM. They directed me to escalate the issue through the appropriate process. Less than 24 hours later, I got a response back indicating that I have passed the course (C170).

The moral of the story is I will be submitting to the CM first, and then, pending their approval, submitting on to Taskstream.

At any rate, I finally feel like I am getting somewhere. 100/123 CEUs completed and I'll be continuing working on the CCNA Security for at least two more weeks.

xengoreth

Well, it took far longer to study for and pass the CCNA Security than I originally planned for, but this morning I passed the exam with an 883. 106/123s complete. Labbing and reading the product documentation as you work your way through the exam blueprint will do more for you than anything else. The OCG or a video series will give you a little detail on the basic theories and principles but ultimately, there is no way to pass the exam without a fair amount of labbing.

In my opinion, you should be working through this certification with a nice beefy server with ESXi (I was running 6.5 on a server with 144GB of RAM, 24 logical prcocessors, and about 2TB of local storage). A key tip is set up VIRL on a standard vSwitch, not a dvSwitch, otherwise you may have trouble bridging traffic from your devices on VIRL to your physical network. Get an eval copy of ISE (2.x) for your TACACS+/RADIUS server. Acquire some L3 switches (3560s are great) for PVLANS. Set up AD for your lab and integrate ISE for AAA. Configure all of you network devices for AAA. Set up a bunch of custom user roles assign users to each role. Set up Switchport Security, DHCP snooping, DAI. Have your wife complain that the "internet is broken". Play with the ASA and make sure you pay special attention to the CLI configuration of the device. Think through your mistakes and fix them! Don't study this exam, but live it and experience it as if it were your job. This was the fun part.

You will struggle to find enough material about the Firepower IPS and content security (WSA, ESA, AMP, etc.) so tack on as much reading of documentation and especially videos that show the web consoles of the WSA, ESA, and Firepower Management Center as you can in order to get a better idea of how these devices work. If you have access to any of them, labbing them up will be a definite advantage.

At any rate, I have 40 days left in my term as of today, so I am going to work on all five remaining classes (17 CEUs) at once and hoping for the best.

ThePuterGeek

Congratulations on the pass! That is fantastic!

supafish9

Good job on the pass! How did you rate the material that WGU offered for the course? I'll be tackling the CCNA and CCNA-Sec next term so I'm just trying to soak up any knowledge.

xengoreth

supafish9 wrote: »

Good job on the pass! How did you rate the material that WGU offered for the course? I'll be tackling the CCNA and CCNA-Sec next term so I'm just trying to soak up any knowledge.

Thanks! The tools WGU gives you are fair at best and at worst completely counter-productive. The CBT Nuggets videos are incomplete and not even bundled up in a reasonable way (i.e. go watch videos from the CCNP Security exam series, go watch CCNA video from the old CCNA Security video series). It was an awful lot of clicking around for not a lot of information. I could only stand them at 1.5x speed.

Boson is a great resource, but everyone, including Boson will warn you that you should use it at the end to test your knowledge and not as a primary resource. The links are mostly to Cisco docs and there's some enterprising individual who put together a Word Doc to all of those resources that can be found in the Course Chatter. This is excellent. The Cisco docs are crucial and provide far more detail than any other resource.

If I could go back, I'd read the OCG (ignore the parts about CCP), run through the Boson links, and spend the rest of my time labbing.

Why they have not given every student a VIRL subscription is beyond me. It's the easiest way to get some time with the ASA. I really wish Cisco did more to make evaluation products easier to acquire especially for this type of purpose.

Dakinggamer87

Keep it going!! Your getting closer and closer

xengoreth

C484 down as of tonight I think this was about four hours worth of work, including taking the test. We're down to almost the last month. My term ends on 30-Sep-2017. I need to wrap up the following:


Business of IT - Project Management – C176
Introduction to Communication – C464
Technical Communication – C768
IT Capstone Written Project – C769


I'm parallelizing the combined tasks from the remainder of the courses to mitigate the horrifying bottleneck known as Crapstream™. I'm targeting you, you stupid Project+ that I don't want to do, next. And aside from that, an awful large amount of writing.

xengoreth

OK done with the Project+. It took about eight hours or so of study to absorb the jargon and formulas (don't be scared off by "formulas", its just arithmetic application of a subset of said jargon). It reaffirmed my position that I have no desire to ever be a project manager but it give you valuable some insight into their process that may be of high value if you haven't worked around projects. Nonetheless, I want to finish up Introduction to Communication – C464 next. I have the Capstone topic approval done and the project already implemented and am now going back and creating the proposal and post-implementation report.

Finally, Technical Communication – C768 now has two tasks instead of three, so that might allow me to finish the course in a couple of days. This class is all superfluous, non-technical busy-work, so motivating myself to get started has been really difficult. Nonetheless, the time crunch has arrived and I've got to just sit down and do it.

xengoreth

To make a long story short, the last ten credits got passed onto the next term due to work and real-life time constraints. I'm handing in my final tasks this week for C768 and C464 (hopefully) by the end of the weekend.

I got word my 38-page Capstone passed tonight, so that's done with. I'm super-happy it required no revisions. Those 38 pages wrote themselves and I did a fun project in my home lab and wrote about it in the context of implementing it for a completely fictional company. I learned a ton along the way. My advice is don't look at the Capstone with fear or dread-- it was fairly easy and you have the flexibility to pick a subject that will teach you something.

justdavey

Congrats!

Paulieb81

Congrats man, inspiring thread. I appreciate you logging your progress.

xengoreth

Just an update.

I passed C768 (Technical Communication) earlier this week. Task 2 (the proposal response to an RFP) was pure torture, but I utilized the CM for a review, revised based on their feedback, and then had a second review and submitted after receiving their approval. I passed the first time.

I have submitted C464 Task 1 (plan for the video) and Task 2 (the video itself). Hopefully it offers enough time before the end of the term (Saturday) to submit a revision on either task if necessary but otherwise, I'm done and ready to graduate.

xengoreth

OK, looks like I passed both assessments. Just waiting for official word that I have graduated.

ksijur

Yay! Well done.
I can't wait to be done by end of this term (July.)

supafish9

Congratulations! I'm almost there with you! Just have to knock out this capstone. Any advice as you were putting together your paper for it?

xengoreth

supafish9 wrote: »

Congratulations! I'm almost there with you! Just have to knock out this capstone. Any advice as you were putting together your paper for it?

A couple of things come to mind.

If you already have a work project you've implemented that meets their requirements (my degree was IT - Sec so it had to be security-related), it's just a matter of writing a proposal and a report. The proposal has to be written as if you have not yet implemented the project, even though it may well already be done. If you don't have a work project that is suitable, just pick a topic you are interested in diving into, get it approved, and go and do your project. Once the actually project is done, it's way easier to have things to write about.

The dates in your Project Timeline have to be in the future-- this is important because I actually got my proposal kicked back due to this. It doesn't matter if you've already completed the project, just talk about it as if it will happen in the future.

For the report, there's a .pdf you can get from the CMs that will show you what sections from the proposal get copied into the report. You must go back and change everything so it reads as if the project has already been implemented. The dates for the timeline now have to be in the past, as well.

Mostly, write to the rubric and use the templates. Make sure all the requirements are covered. This paper was actually way easier than C768 - Technical Communication, which has a not very fun proposal you have to write in response to an RFP.

xengoreth

Just a note-- I received my notifications that I have officially graduated. Your graduation date ends up being the day your SM recommends you for graduation. An initial email you will get quotes 5-10 days for them to make sure you don't owe them money and that you have indeed completed the degree requirements. I actually go the confirmation of my graduation in 4 days.

Nonetheless, while it's tempting to go back for the BSCS program they just unveiled, I've decided I'm done with school for now. It's just too much of a distraction from furthering my career goals, but if WGU one day has a MSCS, I might be interested. Next up will be resurrecting my quest for my CCNP.

justdavey

Congrats!

shimasensei

Congrats! What's next for you?

xengoreth

shimasensei wrote: »

Congrats! What's next for you?

Thanks! Probably working on renewing my VCP with a VCP6.5-DCV and finishing up the CCNP. After that is kind of up in the air. I probably won't end up doing any more school for at least a few years. A CISSP will be in there somewhere, but I think I really need to consider what I'd like to specialize in and go for an expert level cert in that discipline.

Paulieb81

xengoreth wrote: »

Thanks! Probably working on renewing my VCP with a VCP6.5-DCV and finishing up the CCNP. After that is kind of up in the air. I probably won't end up doing any more school for at least a few years. A CISSP will be in there somewhere, but I think I really need to consider what I'd like to specialize in and go for an expert level cert in that discipline.

Congrats bro, quick question about your certs. Do you feel that the CompTIA Linux and CompTIA Project tought you valuable information or were they just part of the process going through WGU and not very useful in real life? I'm looking at the WGU program and I see they are part of most IT paths there.

xengoreth

Paulieb81 wrote: »

Congrats bro, quick question about your certs. Do you feel that the CompTIA Linux and CompTIA Project tought you valuable information or were they just part of the process going through WGU and not very useful in real life? I'm looking at the WGU program and I see they are part of most IT paths there.

Thanks!

Personally, I did not find the majority of the Project+ to be applicable or useful so far in my career or the foreseeable future. Some of the related jargon might be useful when dealing with PMs and other management types, but I think the Project+ is far too diluted from the PMBOK to really be of use to anyone. Most of the test questions were either common sense, jargon, or solving for a variable in one formula or another. It is what it is-- just another requirement that luckily I only had to spend a week or so paying attention to.

Linux+ was a little better, but I've had a lot of lot of Linux experience, so for me personally, it was just adding some legitimacy to my general claim of Linux experience on my resume. It was a lot of fun to study for and if I didn't use Linux on a daily basis, it would involve quite a bit of labbing and learning. I don't like WGU's approach to the material. Really, what you need are a few Linux VMs to play with, the blueprint, and man. Unfortunately, if you use the sad uCertify materials, you'll pass just the same, but you'll miss out on developing actual Linux expertise.

Paulieb81

xengoreth wrote: »

Thanks!

Personally, I did not find the majority of the Project+ to be applicable or useful so far in my career or the foreseeable future. Some of the related jargon might be useful when dealing with PMs and other management types, but I think the Project+ is far too diluted from the PMBOK to really be of use to anyone. Most of the test questions were either common sense, jargon, or solving for a variable in one formula or another. It is what it is-- just another requirement that luckily I only had to spend a week or so paying attention to.

Linux+ was a little better, but I've had a lot of lot of Linux experience, so for me personally, it was just adding some legitimacy to my general claim of Linux experience on my resume. It was a lot of fun to study for and if I didn't use Linux on a daily basis, it would involve quite a bit of labbing and learning. I don't like WGU's approach to the material. Really, what you need are a few Linux VMs to play with, the blueprint, and man. Unfortunately, if you use the sad uCertify materials, you'll pass just the same, but you'll miss out on developing actual Linux expertise.

Thank you for the info. I have some experience with linux from building, running and securing several web servers with CentOS, also dealing with VMware for a few years. I am wondering, since you took those classes in WGU, if you had to do it again, would you rather have just studied real quick and took the certification externally for quick credit to transfer in rather than doing the class first in WGU or is the class not that painful?

I'm going through the registration process currently with WGU and just got my credit evaluation done, I'm looking at a 6/1 start date so I have a month to knock anything out before I officially start. I am a quick study with almost 20 years experience in IT, and my company will reimburse for any certs I pay for myself. With that said, I am thinking if I study for a week, I can knock out the Linux+, another week for the Project+, and probably another week for both of the website certifications as I've done plenty of web development in the past.