CCNA Security Pass

Passed this morning - I did not think the exam was terrible overall, but there were some very oddly worded questions and I had to have been very lucky with some guesses to get the score I did. I have some experience with ESA/WSA/ISE/Sourcefire, so the questions that might be oddballs to some weren't bad for me - I think that Barker's parka document covers most of what you need to know in that regard.

OCG is not enough and I think you can safely disregard anything to do with SDM, even though the book covers it in depth. CBT Nuggets seem to be the best prep for this, and I also purchased the Boson exams which I thought were great. I also did a whole lot of research on my own for topics I wasn't very comfortable with.

I'll do my best to answer questions without violating NDA. Good luck to everyone studying!

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Comments

NetworkNewb

Congratz!!

jdancer

Congo-rats!

bharvey92

Hi Jamthat,

No CCP or SDM then.. assuming the labs must be ASDM tested?

Congrats on the pass!

gncsmith

Congrats on the pass!

jamthat

bharvey92 wrote: »

Hi Jamthat,

No CCP or SDM then.. assuming the labs must be ASDM tested?

Congrats on the pass!

Thanks everyone!

To answer your question I'd say it's safe to 100% rule out CCP and ~95% rule out SDM. You still might want to be prepared for SDM because it's mentioned in the book, but I'm leaning more towards it just being a bad publication from Cisco Press.

Fearoeire

Congratulations and thanks

blatini

jamthat wrote: »

I think that Barker's parka document covers most of what you need to know in that regard.

What is this?

pogue

blatini wrote: »

What is this?

The parka document is a pdf file attached to the new CBT Nuggets 210-260 course. It is the author's attempt to make up for the fact that even he knows that Cisco did a very poor job on this test, and that the CiscoPress OCG is WOEFULLY insufficient to pass this test.

Let's just say this... If you subscribe to CBTNuggets and sit through the 210-260 material, you would be HEAVILY advised to read the parka document and pay close attention to the bolded sections.

It's a garbage exam, and the author did his best to make sure that not as many people fail due to poor Cisco official training material and poor question wording.

I am quite familiar with Cisco's very specific way of wording questions, but this exam takes the cake. The test taker community should boycott this specific test until Cisco fixes it. Cisco is under pretty heavy fire from Palo Alto and Checkpoint. Making their basic security cert for ASAs this retarded is not doing them many favors.

Russ

blatini

Dang I really wasn't planning to do CBT nuggets. Generally just go the route of book + Boson, but maybe I'll switch it up. Thank you for the clarification.

pogue

blatini wrote: »

Dang I really wasn't planning to do CBT nuggets. Generally just go the route of book + Boson, but maybe I'll switch it up. Thank you for the clarification.

And fair warning.. This test is such a mess that the CBT Nuggets videos both point downward to 640-554 content, as well as pointing upward to CCNP:Security content.

On the surface, the 210-260 looks to be something like 7.5 hours of video... Not bad..

Until you find out the instructor gives you something like 15 hours of "homework" outside of the 210-260 content.

It's not his fault... The test really is a mess. LOTS of info not even remotely covered in the OCG.

Russ

coffeeluvr

@pogue..thanks for the insight!!