Starting GCWN On-Demand - Pointers?

LWB250

Getting ready to do the On-Demand version of SEC505. I have a basic knowledge of PowerShell having done a little bit of work with it and significant background with Windows Server and desktop OS's'. Anything I need to know or watch out for in this course?

Thanks!

cyberguypr

I facilitated 505 a few years ago. The PKI day is where we lost half the class. As a general rule I recommend going through the course outline and brushing up on the basics of whatever you identify as a weak spot.

LWB250

Thanks!

Interesting that you would say that, as the one area in the syllabus that my experience is limited in is PKI.

I’m doing this as an “On-Demand” class, so I’ll have plenty of time to go through the material.

Randy_Randerson

LWB250 wrote: »

Thanks!

Interesting that you would say that, as the one area in the syllabus that my experience is limited in is PKI.

I’m doing this as an “On-Demand” class, so I’ll have plenty of time to go through the material.

I'm going to give you some quick pointers from my own personal experience on this. Take it for what it is worth, but I've taken over 10 of these OnDemand with SANS. However, I have not taken SEC505.

Make sure you set time aside to actually take the class! Yes, you'll get 120 days to do the material, but you'll realize very, very quickly that something "always comes up." I've had random family weekends together to travel for work abroad for 2 weeks where I didn't even get to breathe outside of sleep/food. That window will close quickly if you don't stay on top of it.

My suggestion to prosper with these has always been to go through the material first and then go back and do the labs and highlight in the books after you've gone through it once. The benefit of OnDemand is if something isn't clicking on first try, you can just replay the slide or the section again until it either resonates or you had time to research it better and then go back. After you've done the slides ones, I go back and do the labs in order. To me they just make much better sense at that point.

For prepping for the cert attempt: Try to read through the books once and then take your practice test. That should give you some sort of bar of where you are at with understanding the material vs. courseware lookup. From there, build out the index and take it again with the Index and the books. Now you'll really know what areas you're deficient in.

Also, don't hesitate to use their Online SME's either! I've thrown some very random stuff at them in relation to the material and scenarios and they've always been super helpful! One of them for SEC617 went out and found all the juicy materials I needed to make a wardriving Nexus tablet with Kali on it for Kismet. I'm sure they didn't have to, but they did.

LWB250

Randy_Randerson wrote: »

I'm going to give you some quick pointers from my own personal experience on this. Take it for what it is worth, but I've taken over 10 of these OnDemand with SANS. However, I have not taken SEC505.

Make sure you set time aside to actually take the class! Yes, you'll get 120 days to do the material, but you'll realize very, very quickly that something "always comes up." I've had random family weekends together to travel for work abroad for 2 weeks where I didn't even get to breathe outside of sleep/food. That window will close quickly if you don't stay on top of it.

My suggestion to prosper with these has always been to go through the material first and then go back and do the labs and highlight in the books after you've gone through it once. The benefit of OnDemand is if something isn't clicking on first try, you can just replay the slide or the section again until it either resonates or you had time to research it better and then go back. After you've done the slides ones, I go back and do the labs in order. To me they just make much better sense at that point.

For prepping for the cert attempt: Try to read through the books once and then take your practice test. That should give you some sort of bar of where you are at with understanding the material vs. courseware lookup. From there, build out the index and take it again with the Index and the books. Now you'll really know what areas you're deficient in.

Also, don't hesitate to use their Online SME's either! I've thrown some very random stuff at them in relation to the material and scenarios and they've always been super helpful! One of them for SEC617 went out and found all the juicy materials I needed to make a wardriving Nexus tablet with Kali on it for Kismet. I'm sure they didn't have to, but they did.

Thanks for the pointers, all good things for sure, however, this will be the third On-Demand class I've done and my employer lets me work from home on the days I want to do it. By doing that I'm not distracted by office related stuff and can focus on the material at my leisure. I try to schedule one day a week for the class, which has worked out well with previous classes.

With the first one I did procrastinate, only because my employer did not give me time away to do it. However, I requested an extension and got another 30 days to complete the course. I learned my lesson from that one, so I pretty much schedule my days away from the office and plan accordingly so I'm not jammed up at the end.