CEH with no prior experience

Tech333

would one struggle on a 5 day training course required in order to pass the exam? (no iT related work experience)

is knowledge of programming & networking, etc. required in order to cope or would i struggle without the experience/knowledge?

i just think that 5 days isn't enough to properly learn everything from scratch...

danny069

Yeah 5 days isn't enough, the best way is to learn at your own pace and when you feel you are ready in each topic, then I would sit for the CEH.

Mooseboost

Impossible? No. Highly unlikely - Yes.

Coming from no background, it is a lot of information to take it. I would say even the Security+ with no background in five days would be pushing it. This is of course, taking the actual exam.

Would you struggle in a workshop/course designed around the exam? That depends on who is teaching it, how they are teaching it, and if it is designed to completely prepare you or give you the basic concepts.

The real question you must ask yourself is: Why the rush? Are you looking to get a job with the CEH? If so, rushing through the content without understanding anything other than how to pass the exam would not be a wise idea. If you don't have to rush it, study some to familiarize yourself with the basics and then take the course.

I mean, why would you waste money on a course that you won't understand anything from? I would rather get to a point where I could understand the concepts being taught. Assuming the course is detail, which if it is one of those "teach you what you need to pass in 5 days" courses - it is going to have an assumed level of knowledge.

Edit:

As far as you actually taking the course with no background let me ask you this: Would you take a crash Calc class without knowing Algebra? If this wasn't a five day course, I would say it would be worth the money to learn the content - but it seems more of a crash course exam cram workshop style. Just my two cents though!

clarkincnet

I would agree with the comments above. I don't think taking the class is a waste of time but why waste the money on an off-chance of passing the exam? It might be better to do some personal study ahead of the class to prepare, take some practice questions to gauge how well you retained that information, and then take the class and see how you feel about the material.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
― Benjamin Franklin

ITSpectre

The best thing to do... in ANY exam is know the material before hand... you can't pass anything with only 5 days of study.

IronmanX

Your not going to pass the exam after the 5 day course.
I would read through a CEH book (Matt Walker is the one I read) before the course, so your going in with a good amount of information even if you don't understand it all that well. The course has quite a few labs that are easy to follow.

I think then you will be in a better position to self study.
It is going to be hard to pass with no work experience and I assume not really following whats been happening in info sec in the past several years.

Programming I would say no you don't need experience with for the exam but a career yes.
Networking you will need to know very well.

Linux and Windows you will need to know very well. Command line you will need to know very well.


I wrote this before:
"OK so know the TCP hand shake.

nmap -sN. Know what a null scan is and how it works. what the responses are to open and closed ports.
nmap -sF. Know what a FIN scan is and how it works. what the responses are to open and closed ports.
nmap -sX. Know what a XMAS scan is and how it works. what the responses are to open and closed ports.
etc...
Here is the list of switches i studied: -sA -sF -sI -sL -sN -sO -sP -sR -sS -sT -sW -pI -PO -PS -PT -oN -oX
Know your -T0-5 switches.

^^^Also know how they work on/against different operating systems. Windows does not follow RFC 793.

Know your ICMP Types and Codes"