Signed up for the SANS 502 GIAC Certified Firewall Analyst (GCFW) course just now

Has anyone else here taken this course? I'm doing the self study option with test challenge. It should be very interesting. for $3500 I better get my company's money's worth

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dynamik

I actually received the approval for my GPEN Gold paper on my way home from work today. I'm fairly excited, considering there are less than 1000 GPENs and only 7 are Gold. It's really interesting that there are only 400 more GCFWs but almost 600 of the total are Gold. I guess the other GPENs need to pick up the pace

I also submitted a proposal for a Gold in GSEC today. The GPEN Gold will focus on constructing a virtualized penetration testing lab while the GSEC Gold will cover developing foundation-level information security knowledge to be a successful professional penetration tester (if that proposal is accepted).

Paul Boz

I also received a response (same day, not three weeks later, suck it Dynamik) but it turns out that someone has written a paper almost exactly on what I intended to do mine on. That being said, I proposed a new subject that I'm fairly sure no one has covered. Hopefully they get back to me tomorrow so I can start.

you really pointed out my biggest problem man. There are like a million times more golds for the GCFW than for the GPEN so picking a subject at this point in the game is pretty dang tough. I don't want to write a lame paper on some obscure subject just because all of the good topics have been taken. I wish "just let me write on the same subject, I'm sure my paper will be better" was a valid response

dynamik

Weird. I guess it takes a lot longer to find an adviser than it does to simply reply with "no"

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Golds for the IH and IA as well

GWAPT would be nice, considering there are currently zero.

Paul Boz

Hahahaha suck it even harder - I responded to that email at like 11:20 and got a response at 11:30 saying that both subjects would be acceptable to write on but that my new subject would be even better. I got a full dialogue going in one day. Did you send your initial request on the leg of a pidgin?

Paul Boz

what like eight hours from proposal to acceptance?

Congratulations!

Your GCFW Gold application has been accepted. Please log into the GIAC Exam Engine at https://exams.giac.org and click on the "Gold Applications" link, to access your Gold application and proceed with payment. You will be assigned an adviser and have 6 months to complete the Gold process, once your payment has been received.

If you have any questions at this time, please email exam-support@giac.org for assistance.

The SANS Institute
8120 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 205
Bethesda, MD 20814 US

dynamik

Ouch

I'm curious to see how long my GSEC takes to get approved.

I wonder if you got preference since you're a mentor?

Paul Boz

I just updated our blog with the ground work for the GIAC gold paper attempt. I'll be chronicling the entire attempt over the next few months.