CCNP Security Applicable/Worth it for me?

broli720

Such a subjective question I know. I'll give a little background and get to why I'm asking. I have about 7 years experience with the majority of it spent in system engineering and consulting roles. The latter part of my career (last 4 years) has been spent consulting as an SE for Industrial companies regarding ICS security. I've done policy work, deployments, remediation, and worked with a slew of technologies (cisco, juniper, fortinet, and other industrial vendors). My CCNA certs are up for renewal this February and I've decided to get my CCDA to round it off and renew the others. I've done a fair bit of network design in my current role so I figured it would help reinforce it.

It's been a while since I've studied my networking stuff, but man am I having a blast. It's what's giving me that itch again to pursue the professional level certs. I'm moving into a new role at work that's 40% me deploying a custom security solution and 60% product management. As I train my staff, it will eventually be a 80/20 split on the product management side. Is CCNP Security even relevant for me given this new role? I won't really be hands on per se but it obviously wouldn't hurt. Product management and business development is kind of where I want to stay in my career right now so I'm torn on whether I should go down this path.

All opinions are welcome.

HappyBearIT

The answer to this question usually comes from answering "Does my job require me to look at the forest from a plane all day, or do i spend most of my time examining the bark on trees?" If the former then a CISSP or simiar cert should be your goal. If the later, than a CCNP/IE, etc should be your goal.

Someone replied over in the CCIE thread once that the best certs are an extension of your current job or near future job and should not be a 2nd job when you come home at night because you just forget the material once the exam is passed.

NetworkNewb

HappyBearIT wrote: »

the best certs are an extension of your current job or near future job

This! If you're doing any cert that doesn't apply to one of those 2, you better be doing it just for fun or else it would just be a waste of time and money.

broli720

Good advice. I'm pretty sure the knowledge would be useful, but I just won't have that kind of hands on exposure anymore at the management level.