Anyone studying for the SCNP?

JDMurray

I'm currently enrolled in an 8-week college course for one of the two exams of the Security Certified Network Professional (SCNP) certification (http://www.securitycertified.net/SCNP_certifications.htm). Has anyone achieved the SCNP, or is currently studying for it? Thanks.

Don_PA

Good luck with the program. It looks interesting! I put off the CWNA certs since I am too busy finding work. Just doing a $20hr temp job installing rackmount servers and new workstations. Still need some steady computer work.

Anyway, it does seem some employers I see want some firewall experience certs. One wanted Watchguard experience, even though I have played around with ISA 2000 server. My best bet for me is the Checkpoint CCSE program with a total of 3 exams. I have the eval software and it is popular with the top corporate companies in the US.

tcpsyn

I'm taking a course for this certification now.
Its only begun a few days ago, and already the teacher is calling off class and bailing out early. I'm definatly not satisified with the course, but I certainly intend to have this cert under my belt.. Along with Security+

BulletToothTony

I've taken a course on it. I really enjoyed it, espcially the IPChains/IPtables part. Things I didn't like, subnetting. I don't know why I can't get it, but I think it has to do with relying to much on calculators. When we got into Security Policies, my Prof ripped ours up constantly, but this made for a better eye when writing policies. Just make sure that your labs work. Because I took this class twice and after the first run my classmates and I made the school give us the course again. The Pro kept telling us some of our hacks wouldn't work because they freeze the machine. But the thing was, he simply didn't know how to use them. The Pro we had next has done consulting work all over the country and knew his stuff like the back of his hand.

Enjoy.

JDMurray

Why is the instructor bailing? It is very complex course material, and you need to have a complete IT lab set up in class to work through all of the lab exercises. This is also taught as an elective class, and most universities are offering it just to jump on the security bandwagon (read: $$$ for the school). We had 18 students enrolled at the start, but only three weeks into the class we are down to just over half that.

What book/courseware are you using?

And I highly recommend getting the Security+ first.

JDMurray

BulletToothTony wrote:

The Pro we had next has done consulting work all over the country and knew his stuff like the back of his hand.

An instructor with hands-on experience makes a huge difference in what you get out of the class. My instructors seem to be evenly divided between the people with years of on-the-job experience, and those whose "experience" comes from just reading books and playing with software. You just can't fake the understanding achieved by repeatidly working with a technology for years.

Have you taken the HTI exam yet?

BulletToothTony

No I haven't taken the exam yet. I am still studying for my 70-290. I never really knew there was specific course books for the scnp. We used the Marc Minasi Server 2003, Snort, ISA 2000, Linux Fedora Unleased, Hacking Exposed Vol.4, Linux Firewalls. I forget the actual names of some of the books, but basically we didn't follow any certain rule base. That was one thing I loved about this Pro, was that he knew that cert and vendor books prepare you solely for the test, as opposed to hammering the theory into your head and preparing you for real world experience. One of the hardest things we had to go through was our hacking. We would spend all day probing our network and then we'd find out we had just spent time looking at a honey pot or vice versa, we would think our network was hardend, and then he would come from within our network through Man-in-the-middle types of attacks. Very fun, but also made me realize the importance everyone has on the security team.

Again, enjoy the class. It definately was one of my favorites and would love to take again.

JDMurray

The "official" courseware for the SCNP exams are published by elementK:

http://elementkcourseware.com/products/ViewProduct.jsp?frmInventoryID=86924
http://elementkcourseware.com/products/ViewProduct.jsp?frmInventoryID=90999

Their description as "courseware" seems to explain their outrageous price, but they are little more than thick books, really. Lots of information and lab exercises; very little of worth on the CD.