GSEC difficulty?

OmniMan

I have a good index and did all of the on-demand training. What do you think my chances are?

quogue66

Read the books and do all the labs three times and you will definitely pass.

josephandre

my calculations put you at a 63 pct chance of passing.

johndoee

OmniMan wrote: »

I have a good index and did all of the on-demand training. What do you think my chances are?

You did everything everyone else does to pass....So, you have about the same risk of reward or failure as everyone else. Some people go through the material two and three times. Whatever works for you. I personally didn't do any of the labs with the course. But, do whatever works for you.

Good Luck

MalwareMike

How did you do on the practice exams? If you're in the 80s and your index has helped you locate info rather quickly, you are good to go.

futurehendrix

quogue66 wrote: »

Read the books and do all the labs three times and you will definitely pass.

how would you compare the difficulty of the GCIA and GSEC? I'm currently an analyst and would like to eventually be an engineer, architect and eventually a manger role.

Seems like GSEC would be a nice overview of the entire security landscape as oppose to just intrusion detection.

Donklander

futurehendrix wrote: »

how would you compare the difficulty of the GCIA and GSEC? I'm currently an analyst and would like to eventually be an engineer, architect and eventually a manger role.

Seems like GSEC would be a nice overview of the entire security landscape as oppose to just intrusion detection.

GCIA is definitely harder in the sense that it is much more focused.
GSEC is comparable to a technical oriented CISSP. (Long test, very broad in scope but not overly deep)
GCIA lives and dies in understanding protocol headers and Snort/Wireshark/Bro and similar tools, so the purpose of the course is to understand what xxx NID alarm means.

One thing I enjoy about SANS testing is, they don't try to trick you with questions. You either know the material or you don't.

sb97

Donklander wrote: »

GCIA is definitely harder in the sense that it is much more focused.
GSEC is comparable to a technical oriented CISSP. (Long test, very broad in scope but not overly deep)
GCIA lives and dies in understanding protocol headers and Snort/Wireshark/Bro and similar tools, so the purpose of the course is to understand what xxx NID alarm means.

One thing I enjoy about SANS testing is, they don't try to trick you with questions. You either know the material or you don't.

@Donklander - I see you hold the GSEC, GCIA, GCIH. Did you do the Cyber Security Engineering (Core) graduate certificate?

Donklander

I'm in the MSISE program

Blucodex

Donklander wrote: »

GCIA is definitely harder in the sense that it is much more focused.
GSEC is comparable to a technical oriented CISSP. (Long test, very broad in scope but not overly deep)
GCIA lives and dies in understanding protocol headers and Snort/Wireshark/Bro and similar tools, so the purpose of the course is to understand what xxx NID alarm means.

One thing I enjoy about SANS testing is, they don't try to trick you with questions. You either know the material or you don't.

I just took a GSEC practice exam yesterday. I felt it was more technically relevant than a CISSP because it has operating system specific questions, network traffic questions, and incident response questions. I'm sure there are more examples--then again, I took my CISSP in 2011 I believe.

I feel like the GSEC is a much more in-depth version of the combination of Security+, CEH, and CHFI.

josh.armentrout1

GSEC, like others have said, is a very broad subject exam. I'd consider it a hard exam due to that. The other GIAC exams are far more focused on a specific subject and that allows you to concentrate on a specific item when studying.

Have a well defined index, use the practice exams to tune your index, and pass an exam. I try to make my indexes overkill such that I don't have to look inside the other books. If I need to look in the books, it's to get specific items or a diagram from the page. The last ditch effort is to use their printed "index" which is basically a concordance of keywords. This will get you into a lot of headaches. Try not to go there.

beads

If your most comfortable with Windows bone up a bit on the directory structure and syntax of LINUX, etc. Other than that it was a long but quite doable exam.

- b/eads

krucial85

I've taken several SANS courses and I've found that if you really read ALL of the material, watch the on-demand videos ( if you have them) and make a good index, the GSEC course is very doable. This is the key for most of the courses.

futurehendrix

Donklander wrote: »

GCIA is definitely harder in the sense that it is much more focused.
GSEC is comparable to a technical oriented CISSP. (Long test, very broad in scope but not overly deep)
GCIA lives and dies in understanding protocol headers and Snort/Wireshark/Bro and similar tools, so the purpose of the course is to understand what xxx NID alarm means.

One thing I enjoy about SANS testing is, they don't try to trick you with questions. You either know the material or you don't.

I am still a few years away from management (this is my first year as a security analyst) so does the GSEC make sense right now?

LionelTeo

GSEC covers Linux, Windows and Policies from the security perspective. It is actually a pretty good course. I generally felt that the content is written to be more useful for security administrators managing Active Directory and Windows/Linux servers in mind. While it is certainly useful for those who are managing ADs and servers on a daily basis, it is a good to know for those who wanted to learn more about them.