Question About Proctored Exam

xklathos

Hi all,

I will be attending my first SANS exam soon, It will be Proctured, I have a concern about SANS open book policy. I have read thru most of the discussions here yet i could not get a clear answer for my question.

Here it is : Do proctors checks the genuinity of the sans course books ?  They are hard copies (but copies) i came to find. Will they only be concern about the book being printed or not, or do they also check for the original books and whether or not you took the course ?

Thanks in Advance,

JDMurray

Are you talking about the proctors at a testing center or the proctor for an online exam? For a testing center, you are allowed to bring any paper into the exam room that you want. I had my SANS books, notes in a notebook, yellow sticky notes, a book written by a SANS instructor, and a canvas book bag. No one looked at these material that I brought into the exam room.  I am not sure how an on-line proctor will examine or restrict what you have at your computer.

xklathos

JDMurray said:

Are you talking about the proctors at a testing center or the proctor for an online exam? For a testing center, you are allowed to bring any paper into the exam room that you want. I had my SANS books, notes in a notebook, yellow sticky notes, a book written by a SANS instructor, and a canvas book bag. No one looked at these material that I brought into the exam room.  I am not sure how an on-line proctor will examine or restrict what you have at your computer.

My question is for online proctoring, I just dont know what i will be facing ? How will the proctor will check my materials thru webcam in which detail

JDMurray

Perhaps you can contact the testing provider and ask?

xklathos

JDMurray said:

Perhaps you can contact the testing provider and ask?

I just didnt want to raise any alarms

Thanks for your reply tho, appreciated.

TechGromit

xklathos said:

Do proctors checks the genuinity of the sans course books ?  They are hard copies (but copies) i came to find. Will they only be concern about the book being printed or not, or do they also check for the original books and whether or not you took the course ?

No they don't care. SANS is a specialty testing market for them anyway, each center might get 5 SANS exam takers a year if that. They haven't a clue what SANS is. Sometimes they are so clueless they mistakenly try to stop you from taking material in with you. I think the only rule is you have to be able to carry the material in with you and they verify your don't have a computer in with the material.  

TechGromit

xklathos said:

My question is for online proctoring, I just don't know what i will be facing ? How will the proctor will check my materials thru webcam in which detail

Don't know how they do a SANS exam, but a co-worker recently took an ITIL exam recently. they tell you to pick the camera up and pan around the room. So you might want to take down your any indecent posters on your walls first

xklathos

TechGromit said:

xklathos said:

Do proctors checks the genuinity of the sans course books ?  They are hard copies (but copies) i came to find. Will they only be concern about the book being printed or not, or do they also check for the original books and whether or not you took the course ?

No they don't care. SANS is a specialty testing market for them anyway, each center might get 5 SANS exam takers a year if that. They haven't a clue what SANS is. Sometimes they are so clueless they mistakenly try to stop you from taking material in with you. I think the only rule is you have to be able to carry the material in with you and they verify your don't have a computer in with the material.  

Thanks a lot sir, I feel relived. I will definetly make sure to leave nothing on the wall One more question if i may, In some document of SANS it says, any notes, but in some other it specifically states that hand written notes are allowed. Do you have any info about that as well ? But all in all thank you so much !

JDMurray

BTW, they are "GIAC exams." SANS is only the training company; GIAC is the testing provider.

TechGromit

xklathos said:

One more question if i may, In some document of SANS it says, any notes, but in some other it specifically states that hand written notes are allowed. Do you have any info about that as well ? But all in all thank you so much !

Any printed material is fine. You better off typing something up and printing it out, then to trying to determine if that one letter on your hand written note is a Y or T.

I don't know if you read the posts on indexing, but it's very helpful not just for using on the exam, but studying too. I'm going for my CISSP before the end of the year, and I'm planning to make a good index after I finish reading the books. While you can't use any material on the CISSP, the irony is  if you take the time to build a good index, chances are you will not need to refer to it at all.  

quogue66

It sounds like you were able to make a copy of someone's material and you're planning to use it to take the test. The books are updated multiple times per year. The exam is also updated. the cost of a GIAC exam for folks that didn't take the course is around $2,000. If your course material is older you may have difficulty passing the test and that's a lot of money to throw away.

JDMurray

You are not given enough time when taking a GIAC exam to lookup the answer to every question anyway. You are only using the printed material to occasionally confirm what you already (should) know. It's very handy if you want to get a 90%+ exam score, but you'll run out of time if you rely on looking stuff up too much.

charismaticx

The test proctors will only what you’re using for the exam. I’ve had the proctors skim through some of my index or flip a few pages of the books. Either than that I don’t think they care. Their just there to make sure you don’t break any rules during the exam. You’re able to bring any printed material for the exam that may help. Hopefully, that helps. 

SteveLavoie

JDMurray said:

You are not given enough time when taking a GIAC exam to lookup the answer to every question anyway. You are only using the printed material to occasionally confirm what you already (should) know. It's very handy if you want to get a 90%+ exam score, but you'll run out of time if you rely on looking stuff up too much.

And it is getting worse with the new labs.. when I took GPEN, i did the 75 multiple choice question in 75 min or so.. then 90 min for the 7 labs