Made CCSP mark

keatron · January 2008

Just wanted to let everyone know I passed the 5 CCSP exams, and the CCNA (required for CCSP). In all I've been working on this for the last 8 months. For the CCNA I only used the Wendell Odom Cisco Press ICND1 and ICND2 books. For the CCSP exams, I used the official Cisco Networking Academy Books. For the IPS exam and the Pix & ASA exam, I got most of my help from assisting one of our Cisco Security folks with a few implementations while taking notes and matching up what we did with what's in those books. Then practice (lots of hands on with various ASA models and extensive hands on with the Cisco 4255 IPS Sensor appliance). Ironically, the exam I found to be the biggest challenge for me was the SNRS (routing and switching security exam). I guess this is because I don't do routing and switching on a daily or even semi daily basis. Good luck to everyone preparing for these exams. And I can certainly tell you that none of them are what I would call "easy" If I had to pick one that was easiest for me it was the HIPS exam, which is basically Cisco Security Agent (I opted for this over MARS and other choices). DO NOT under estimate these exams, and try to get as much hands on practice time as possible.

Keatron.

dynamik · January 2008

That's quite an accomplishment. Congratulations!

So it's on to the CCIE: Security now, right?

keatron · January 2008

dynamik wrote:

That's quite an accomplishment. Congratulations!

So it's on to the CCIE: Security now, right?

I've already purchased the IE security lab practice manuals and purchased a few books to work on the written. I'm planning to do the written before April, and maybe schedule the lab for sometime torwards the end of the year, or beginning of next year. Thanks for the congrats.

Keatron.

shednik · January 2008

keatron wrote:

I've already purchased the IE security lab practice manuals and purchased a few books to work on the written. I'm planning to do the written before April, and maybe schedule the lab for sometime torwards the end of the year, or beginning of next year. Thanks for the congrats.
Keatron.

Nice keatron

Congrats on the CCSP...what are your thoughts of going from the CCNA to the CCSP without the CCNP??...also best of luck for the IE!!

keatron · January 2008

shednik wrote:

keatron wrote:

I've already purchased the IE security lab practice manuals and purchased a few books to work on the written. I'm planning to do the written before April, and maybe schedule the lab for sometime torwards the end of the year, or beginning of next year. Thanks for the congrats.
Keatron.

Nice keatron Congrats on the CCSP...what are your thoughts of gpoing frm the CCNA to the CCSP without the CCNP??...also best of luck for the IE!!

I certainly think Mike would have a much better informed opinion on this question since he's done both. However, in my day to day duties, I never deal with routing and switching. Usually when we're called in to do the security part, all routing and switching has been done and we're tasked with securing network entry points, sensitive areas of the network (internal and external). We usually do this with a variety of different solutions. Snort, Cisco IPS, Pix and ASA (including multiple context configurations), etc. For someone who works for a meduim size company, where you probably not only have to deal with the security side, but also do some routing and switch installs and configs, I can certainly see the benefit of doing NP first, the SP. Me doing NP is still not 100% out of question, but CCIE Security certainly takes priority over that.

Keatron

Ahriakin · January 2008

Congrats, I thought you already had this one but it's kinda hard to spot in that monster you call a cert list

.
Funny thing is I did the SNRS first purely from book knowledge and used it to help get a job with more Cisco security device exposure so I used to look back on it as the easiest knowing I could never have done the others without hands-on....but now I'm coming up to my first stab at the CCIE written I'm starting to feel the same way you did, I let the R&S side slide so much (and work with it so little) it's going to be my hardest topic. From what I've seen so far the CCIE Security written is a lot more R&S and general networking focused than the CCSP so prepare for the pain

crazy_jay · January 2008

You may want to pick up the CCIE practical studies and read up on R&S. The CCIE Security has a lot of route/switch questions. It gets heavily involved in all the routing protocols, especially in BGP and OSPF. The lab used to be probably a 70% R&S and 30% Security. Its gone down a lot, but I would still say it is probably 45% R&S and 55% Security.

keatron · January 2008

crazy_jay wrote:

You may want to pick up the CCIE practical studies and read up on R&S. The CCIE Security has a lot of route/switch questions. It gets heavily involved in all the routing protocols, especially in BGP and OSPF. The lab used to be probably a 70% R&S and 30% Security. Its gone down a lot, but I would still say it is probably 45% R&S and 55% Security.

I've certainly planned to do that as well. I'm actually going to sit in on a prep class for the IE routing and switching just as a matter of completeness. The actual basics of routing and switching I can do just fine. I've been somewhat involved in 2 very large national MPLS fully meshed roll-outs, and learned a good bit throughout that process. The stuff that puts me to sleep are things like the CBAC stuff, or pretty much any of it that revolves around making a dumb router, a smart firewall (or is it the other way around? make a smart router a dumb firewall?)

Either way, I'm certainly heeding your warning and I appreciate the heads up.

Keatron.

keatron · January 2008

Ahriakin wrote:

Congrats, I thought you already had this one but it's kinda hard to spot in that monster you call a cert list .
Funny thing is I did the SNRS first purely from book knowledge and used it to help get a job with more Cisco security device exposure so I used to look back on it as the easiest knowing I could never have done the others without hands-on....but now I'm coming up to my first stab at the CCIE written I'm starting to feel the same way you did, I let the R&S side slide so much (and work with it so little) it's going to be my hardest topic. From what I've seen so far the CCIE Security written is a lot more R&S and general networking focused than the CCSP so prepare for the pain

I know exactly what you mean about the hands on. As I was going through the IPS exam I remember saying to myself on over half the questions "there's no way a person would know this with out hands on". And the lab sims DID require some serious focus.