Bl8ckr0uter's Security+ trek

xmalachi wrote: »

If you obtain a professional level certification you must recertify at the professional level. If you are talking about just recertifying the CCNA then that would work. But if you are looking to recertify a CCNP, you would have to take an equal or higher exam.

Thanks for the heads up. So I guess I will end up with the other certs lol.

Update: I finished the book today and score a 95% on the final exam in the book.

As posted before I have been consistently getting 87%+ on each of the chapter exams.

I feel confident enough to take this this thursday but I feel that I may be acting overconfident. Should I continue with the study plan and wait a week or is it safe to say I could probably do this earlier than expected (pending I work on practice exams til' this wednesday)?

Hows the book coming along knwminus?

rogue2shadow wrote: »

Update: I finished the book today and score a 95% on the final exam in the book. As posted before I have been consistently getting 87%+ on each of the chapter exams.

I feel confident enough to take this this thursday but I feel that I may be acting overconfident. Should I continue with the study plan and wait a week or is it safe to say I could probably do this earlier than expected (pending I work on practice exams til' this wednesday)?

Hows the book coming along knwminus?

Wow dude. I am finishing up chapter 3 and maybe chapter 4 tonight. I had my first day at the new job tonight. First order of business, work on WSUS and get the patches in order.

knwminus wrote: »

Wow dude. I am finishing up chapter 3 and maybe chapter 4 tonight. I had my first day at the new job tonight. First order of business, work on WSUS and get the patches in order.

Congrats on your first day!

I hope to see one for myself soon haha.

I was so excited about the book during my Net+ and A+ studies and I just kept reading it little by little in between down times; when its actually time to study for Sec+ I come to realize I already read about half the book lol.

rogue2shadow wrote: »

I feel confident enough to take this this thursday but I feel that I may be acting overconfident. Should I continue with the study plan and wait a week or is it safe to say I could probably do this earlier than expected (pending I work on practice exams til' this wednesday)?

Good luck man! I take the 70-680 Thursday and I feel pretty good about it. Hopefully both of us will be happy when Thursday is over with...

good luck guys!

Took yesterday night off. I will double up tonight to get myself back on track. Chapters 3+4 shouldn't be to bad.

knwminus wrote: »

Took yesterday night off. I will double up tonight to get myself back on track. Chapters 3+4 shouldn't be to bad.

You should be done in no time

. The biggest halt in my studies was memorizing the asymmetric/symmetric topics.

rogue2shadow wrote: »

You should be done in no time . The biggest halt in my studies was memorizing the asymmetric/symmetric topics.

I'm pissed though. I took the night off to watch the NBA finals and the game was a blow out. I am happy its going to 7 though

Are you still taking the exam tomorrow?

knwminus wrote: »

I'm pissed though. I took the night off to watch the NBA finals and the game was a blow out. I am happy its going to 7 though

Are you still taking the exam tomorrow?

Yea. Let's see how far this overconfidence takes me lol. Looking back at my notes, I am easily remembering just about all the topics. I always have that good period of butterflies before a exam day anyway; I just gotta go in and kill it and when I kill it, I'll create a thread called Mr. CompTIA+ haha.

rogue2shadow wrote: »

Yea. Let's see how far this overconfidence takes me lol. Looking back at my notes, I am easily remembering just about all the topics. I always have that good period of butterflies before a exam day anyway; I just gotta go in and kill it and when I kill it, I'll create a thread called Mr. CompTIA+ haha.

You mean Mr. Security+, right? LOL

I feel the same way, it's the day before and I am always suspcious that I may have studied too deeply in a certain area. I have never studied for a Microsoft certification before, so I really don't know what to expect.

The Security+ was a very interesting exam. I got hit with really oddly worded test questions. Be ready to slow down and study questions. If you don't get them right away check-mark it to review later. Don't over analyze them.

veritas_libertas wrote: »

You mean Mr. Security+, right? LOL

I feel the same way, it's the day before and I am always suspcious that I may have studied too deeply in a certain area. I have never studied for a Microsoft certification before, so I really don't know what to expect.

The Security+ was a very interesting exam. I got hit with really oddly worded test questions. Be ready to slow down and study questions. If you don't get them right away check-mark it to review later. Don't over analyze them.

Got ya. Time seems to slow down when I'm doing CompTIA exams lol. I think this time I will become Mr. CompTIA+ due to the fact that I will officially have the lifetime trifecta (A+, Net+, Sec+)

rogue2shadow wrote: »

Got ya. Time seems to slow down when I'm doing CompTIA exams lol. I think this time I will become Mr. CompTIA+ due to the fact that I will officially have the lifetime trifecta (A+, Net+, Sec+) .

Nothing makes time slow down like a certification exam, this is true. Hmm, so I might as well put down CompTIA for life on my signature?

I am still in chapter 4 of the book. I want to try to finish 4 and 5 today to keep myself on track for finishing on Sunday. I have been killing the exams at the end of the chapters. There are a few things that I marked for additional research (SELinux, IGMP, Information Concentrators ) and I am sure other stuff will come up. That isn't so much for the S+ but for my general knowledge.

On another note, HIPPA and SOX are confusing as hell.

Yea; HIPPA is a pain haha. Keep up the momentum and I'm sure I'll see the Sec+ on your profile soon enough. Having gone through the CCNA Security, this will most likely be cake to you.

@Veritas - most definitely haha.

rogue2shadow wrote: »

Yea; HIPPA is a pain haha. Keep up the momentum and I'm sure I'll see the Sec+ on your profile soon enough. Having gone through the CCNA Security, this will most likely be cake to you.

@Veritas - most definitely haha.

Hopefully. I want to finish chapter 4 before I leave today (within 3 hours). I think I can get it done since we are slow right now.

I am working for an insurance place so I need to be aware of HIPPA and SOX (more HIPPA than anything else). So much to know...

Well I am on chapter 5. I am in the NOC so I hope to finish chapters 5-7 by the time I leave today. I'm moving my main laptop to Fedora as we speak. I should be able to get that done as well. I guess thats a benefit of being alone for 12 hours.

I want to try to finish the book by Sunday (which should be doable). I have some research items that I want to check out (setting up a HIDS/NIDS, Honeynet, SELinux, IAS, and a few others) that I want to work on next week. I know that labing out that stuff isn't nessessary but my goal is to build my knowledge so I don't mind the extra time. There are also a few other books I want to go over (mainly the ISCW guide for IPSEC and ISAKMP) so that will fill my next week.

Almost done with my reading goal. The main thing I hate about these studies so far is the fact that it there is no step by step "this is how you do it". I should be finished the book by Sunday but my studies for the Security+ are no where near complete. I have indentified several things that I am going to lab out over the next few days/weeks so I can drill in certain concepts. I guess I don't like the fact that I don't see the exam as practical. Oh well, I guess it is what I make of it.

knwminus wrote: »

Almost done with my reading goal. The main thing I hate about these studies so far is the fact that it there is no step by step "this is how you do it". I should be finished the book by Sunday but my studies for the Security+ are no where near complete. I have indentified several things that I am going to lab out over the next few days/weeks so I can drill in certain concepts. I guess I don't like the fact that I don't see the exam as practical. Oh well, I guess it is what I make of it.

Nice nice. Keep us up to date! I like the momentum

.

Looking at our certs, I just realized it looks as if I'm trying to catch up to you haha.

rogue2shadow wrote: »

Nice nice. Keep us up to date! I like the momentum .

Looking at our certs, I just realized it looks as if I'm trying to catch up to you haha.

Lol you'll probably end up lapping me in the end though. You goal is larger than mine at least cert wise.

I'm going into work at midnight so I plan to finish up the book there. I am going to take my ISCW and CCNA Security so I can brush back up on encryption. My next steps are to research my topic areas and study a little more about those areas. I'm also going to go over the SP 800 documents because business needs are the reasons why IT exist. I kind of found risk management interesting--not sure why though. I'm also going to start making my notes available on my blog in the next week or so.

Time to go hit the weights and get ready for work.

citinerd

I just bought Darril's book from amazon and I am waiting for it to arrive but I have a Question... Does it have a CD that contains a PDF of the book? Since I work 3rd shift I like to read at work but leave the book at home.

citinerd wrote: »

I just bought Darril's book from amazon and I am waiting for it to arrive but I have a Question... Does it have a CD that contains a PDF of the book? Since I work 3rd shift I like to read at work but leave the book at home.

Sorry. I've been busy the last few days. The book does NOT come with a PDF or a cd. Don't let that stop you though as it is a good read.

Still haven't finished the book lol. I have been busy at work with auditing the cisco switch configurations. I need to learn about QoS pretty quickly (especially as it pertains to voice and ISCSI traffic

) so I haven't been able to get in the book like I want to. I am going to try to finish tonight since we have change control tomorrow and I won't have any time. This this weekend (fri, sat, sun) I am going to start doing my research. I don't want to just pass the test. Certs aren't that important here (my Senior doesn't have any, just 14 years of exp) so I don't need to rush to get it done or anything although I still want to take it on the 10th. I guess I want to get the most of what I can get from my Sec+ experience. I'm questioning the point of doing the MCSA, and if I do any MS certs it would probably do the MCP (but I am not sure). I have all of the material so I can go over what would be important for my job (the 291 material) and go from there. One exam that I am thinking about now is the SNIA SCSP (storage) as we use a fair amount of ISCSI. I also think the CCIP would be good (we are moving to MPLS in the not to distant future, we need QoS and then R/S) but I am not to worried about it right now.

knwminus wrote: »

Still haven't finished the book lol. I have been busy at work with auditing the cisco switch configurations. I need to learn about QoS pretty quickly (especially as it pertains to voice and ISCSI traffic ) so I haven't been able to get in the book like I want to. I am going to try to finish tonight since we have change control tomorrow and I won't have any time. This this weekend (fri, sat, sun) I am going to start doing my research. I don't want to just pass the test. Certs aren't that important here (my Senior doesn't have any, just 14 years of exp) so I don't need to rush to get it done or anything although I still want to take it on the 10th. I guess I want to get the most of what I can get from my Sec+ experience. I'm questioning the point of doing the MCSA, and if I do any MS certs it would probably do the MCP (but I am not sure). I have all of the material so I can go over what would be important for my job (the 291 material) and go from there. One exam that I am thinking about now is the SNIA SCSP (storage) as we use a fair amount of ISCSI. I also think the CCIP would be good (we are moving to MPLS in the not to distant future, we need QoS and then R/S) but I am not to worried about it right now.

Nice update! If you're going for CCIP, you might as well do CCNP too. The CCIP is only two or three exams away from CCNP (depending on if you do BGP+MPLS composite or the exams separately).

rogue2shadow wrote: »

Nice update! If you're going for CCIP, you might as well do CCNP too. The CCIP is only two or three exams away from CCNP (depending on if you do BGP+MPLS composite or the exams separately).

I know. I know the material will be good for reading but I am not sure if I want to cert "in that direction". I really need to jump on the switch and QoS material. The MPLS material would be good as well. The BGP....probably good for knowledge but not for my job. I mean we really don't have that much network gear as it really isn't that large of a company. But we do have some work to do....

We will see. I am looking to stay here long term. I am more concerned with finishing school w/ honors ( at least cum laude --- no "cum" jokes please lol) and picking up a few career oriented, important certs. I know I want to do the C|EH and SSCP. I would also want the GSEC but after that I am not sure. I just don't feel like chasing certs right now lol. I might do CCDA in a bit to renew my CCNA:S

knwminus wrote: »

We will see. I am looking to stay here long term. I am more concerned with finishing school w/ honors ( at least cum laude --- no "cum" jokes please lol) and picking up a few career oriented, important certs. I know I want to do the C|EH and SSCP. I would also want the GSEC but after that I am not sure. I just don't feel like chasing certs right now lol. I might do CCDA in a bit to renew my CCNA:S

Wise move! Getting college over with really reduces the stress. I have one more year and I can't wait to get it over with. I promised my wife that as soon as college is over with we are going overseas for a vacation.

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Wise move! Getting college over with really reduces the stress. I have one more year and I can't wait to get it over with. I promised my wife that as soon as college is over with we are going overseas for a vacation.

I agree. I'm in the same boat minus the wife and the overseas vacation money lol.

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Wise move! Getting college over with really reduces the stress. I have one more year and I can't wait to get it over with. I promised my wife that as soon as college is over with we are going overseas for a vacation.

We never had a honeymoon so I think we are thinking about going to Japan. Don't get me wrong though, I know I need certs to differentiate myself from my fellow graduates but I am not going to chase them all. I think I have myself settled in my mind now and my sig won't be changing for a while. Hopefully.

knwminus wrote: »

We never had a honeymoon so I think we are thinking about going to Japan. Don't get me wrong though, I know I need certs to differentiate myself from my fellow graduates but I am not going to chase them all. I think I have myself settled in my mind now and my sig won't be changing for a while. Hopefully.

Indeed! Your resolve, as well as the advice of many others in this community, has laid great influence on my cert path as well. I think this is pretty much it for now unless I end up using my crim degree in the end (FBI, forensic examiner etc.)

In the end having dual specialties will make the difference