Remote Training?

jelevated

Investigate SANS Work Study. It might not be available remotely however you may be able to do it for one of your local classes. For $990 and a few hours a day of indentured servitude you get an exam attempt, books and ondemand training. I helped a SANS instructor unpack books and run a few errands for training participants and it saved me $5,000

IMO for your situation I believe going directly to ISC2 for the CISSP is the best cert value. However from a class/certification standpoint, SANS is unmatched IMO. The Windows Security Admin cert/track, SEC505 in particular is an incredible value. The cost is pretty insane, six grand?! but the material is worth it, seriously.

Also keep in mind that you are entitled to updated versions of the SANS coursework as part of your certification recycle. High initial fee but for $400 every 4 years you get the latest contents.

TechGromit

jelevated wrote: »

Investigate SANS Work Study.

The Work Study is quickly becoming a thing of myth. Getting selected is becoming increasingly more difficult to the point it more like winning the lottery.

Danielm7

Work Study is up to $1100 now. Still "cheap" considering the full SANS prices but I don't think anything they do is cheap.

markulous

Well, we'll see what happens. I pitched it to my boss and told him that I'm not comfortable self-studying material that strictly says that it cannot be shared and I don't want to absorb $1300 either if I don't pass. I proposed the option of sending me to the training for 6k or if they can help purchase a couple hundred dollars of books for the CISSP, I can just study on my own for that and I'm much more comfortable fronting $599 for that.

markulous

Yay! My boss approved the SANS course. I'm leaning towards the GCIH. For what we do I think it will be most beneficial at the moment.

TechGromit

markulous wrote: »

Yay! My boss approved the SANS course. I'm leaning towards the GCIH. For what we do I think it will be most beneficial at the moment.

Congratulations, money well spent... well so long as it's not yours Make sure you take advantage of the free netwars after classes. I make the mistake of thinking it cost extra, but it's free with your course. Don't forget to signup for your certification exam sometime during your course, it's only $675 when you take a SANS course.
.

markulous

Ah I didn't realize that was free...Yeah I'm going to have them charge that $675 for the voucher so it's all considered training.

markulous

Well now it looks like I may hold off...My coworker wants to take the GCIH and since we're going to be in charge of Firesight and all the IDS policies here soon, I think I'll go through a bootcamp for that instead. I gotta renew my CCNA stuff this year anyway and it looks like the 300-210 (CCNP: S) exam covers a bit of that, so kind of two birds with one stone. I don't really want to use up 6k of our budget if it's taking training away from other people

bigdogz

I do not know your background but your coworker may get a step up on you if he goes for the GCIH because it teaches the methodologies and can be applied to the environment.

In the GCIH there are some techniques to get by an IDP/IPS... and you can learn more from talking to your instructor for 5 minutes.

...just my 2 cents.

Good Luck!!!

markulous

What a ride. Literally after I sent that, our new manager came in and said our budget towards all of this is very high and he wants to get me into the Todd Lammle Firepower training AND GCIH AND send me to Blackhat/Defcon AND get me whatever training I need for a CCNP exam.

That's a good point though that he could get a step up on me with some stuff but sounds like they're wanting to throw a ton of money at us. Then I'll aim towards CISSP in Q1 2018

markulous

Yeah, if you're saving them that much in opex, they should at least spring for some practice exams at the bare minimum.

Thanks! Next year I hope to be super marketable at this time.

GirlyGirl

So this thread goes from I am signing up for GSEC (but it was obviously not "approved", but I am still signing up), to I have to get it approved, to it's approved, to I "am a nice guy" and it was approved but I don't want to use the money, to a new manager came in in the past week and the budget is high now I can do A, B, C, D, and E.. I have a headache. No disrespect. My sincere apologies.

Danielm7

markulous wrote: »

What a ride. Literally after I sent that, our new manager came in and said our budget towards all of this is very high and he wants to get me into the Todd Lammle Firepower training AND GCIH AND send me to Blackhat/Defcon AND get me whatever training I need for a CCNP exam.

That's a good point though that he could get a step up on me with some stuff but sounds like they're wanting to throw a ton of money at us. Then I'll aim towards CISSP in Q1 2018

Wow, they went from wanting you to use someone else's SANS material to easily dropping 20K in a year in training, that's quite the change!

markulous

GirlyGirl wrote: »

So this thread goes from I am signing up for GSEC (but it was obviously not "approved", but I am still signing up), to I have to get it approved, to it's approved, to I "am a nice guy" and it was approved but I don't want to use the money, to a new manager came in in the past week and the budget is high now I can do A, B, C, D, and E.. I have a headache. No disrespect. My sincere apologies.

YOU have a headache? How do you think I feel?

markulous

Danielm7 wrote: »

Wow, they went from wanting you to use someone else's SANS material to easily dropping 20K in a year in training, that's quite the change!

When I started the thread we had our director here and literally within the days afterwards we lost him (he was only here a few days more) tons of things changed. We were reporting to the CIO directly (which we still kind of are) to having our co-worker promoted who was selling all of this stuff to the CIO. So, you guys can see all the chaos from this.

markulous

Officially signed up to take the Simulcast for the GCIH in May. Can't wait!