Passed today!

2ndchance

I scored lower on this than I did my CCNA, but I was pleased with the score nonetheless. Celebrate tonight! Then I'm taking a month off of studying. We are having our fifth child sometime in the next 1-2 weeks.

wirerat

Congrats on the pass and the baby!

earweed

Congrats on the new cert and the new baby.
Get some sleep now before that baby comes, I'm sure you know the drill by now.

mikej412

Congratulations!!

Enjoy your Celebration and good luck with the impending sleep deprivation

alan2308

Congrats!

rogue2shadow

Congrats on the child and CCNA Sec :P.

What did you use to study and which of those materials did you find useful?

2ndchance

I used the following resources:

CBT Nuggets
Cisco Official Study Guide
Exam Cram
Darril Gibson's Security + Book (I took Security+ just under a month ago. There is definately a lot of overlap).

I enjoyed reading both books. The Cisco book gave lots of extra information and the Exam Cram was more focused in nature. I re-read most of the Cisco book the day before the exam. I would also concur with others on this forum that have said that the Boson Exam Sim in the back of the Cisco book was worth the price alone. I didn't use the practice tests at the back of the Exam Cram book simply because of how good the Boson Exam Sim was.

CBT Nuggets was great for all the hands on material, but Ciarra didn't delve too deeply into organizational security or different types of attacks. His nuggets on Firewalls and VPNs were worth their weight in gold.

I labbed Zone-Based Firewall Policies and VPNs until I could perform everything from the CLI. After that, I made sure I could find everything in the SDM. I have never used AAA so I configured a TACACS+ server and made sure I was comfortable with how to configure authentication methods.

I didn't lab ACLs and Layer2 security much only because I've done it on the job.

Hope this helps,

maddem

Congratz!

chrisone

2ndchance wrote: »

I used the following resources:

CBT Nuggets
Cisco Official Study Guide
Exam Cram
Darril Gibson's Security + Book (I took Security+ just under a month ago. There is definately a lot of overlap).

I enjoyed reading both books. The Cisco book gave lots of extra information and the Exam Cram was more focused in nature. I re-read most of the Cisco book the day before the exam. I would also concur with others on this forum that have said that the Boson Exam Sim in the back of the Cisco book was worth the price alone. I didn't use the practice tests at the back of the Exam Cram book simply because of how good the Boson Exam Sim was.

CBT Nuggets was great for all the hands on material, but Ciarra didn't delve too deeply into organizational security or different types of attacks. His nuggets on Firewalls and VPNs were worth their weight in gold.

I labbed Zone-Based Firewall Policies and VPNs until I could perform everything from the CLI. After that, I made sure I could find everything in the SDM. I have never used AAA so I configured a TACACS+ server and made sure I was comfortable with how to configure authentication methods.

I didn't lab ACLs and Layer2 security much only because I've done it on the job.

Hope this helps,

Congrats on the pass! however i have one minor question about your prep for labs. What did you use as a TACACS+ server? software?

phoeneous

chrisone wrote: »

What did you use as a TACACS+ server? software?

I'm curious too.

EDIT:

I came across these with a quick google search, 2ndchance, were any of these the ones you used?

http://www.shrubbery.net/tac_plus/
http://www.gazi.edu.tr/tacacs/
http://www.pro-bono-publico.de/projects/