My thoughts on the CEHv7

forestgiant

Fresh from the bakery is my CEHv7 Exam Score Report. I passed.

But, I have some grave concerns about the exam. It's all over the place, a dozen domains and only shallow coverage. Very inconsistent grammar, sentence structure, verb use, etc... I KNOW it's supposed to be a technical exam, but when the language distracts and interferes with the exam's intents, something's seriously wrong.

The good news is, I did learn some tools and rolled them into production environment toward the end of my study. The exam was not a good indicator of hacking skills nor intents, but it does expose one to concepts and tools of "hacking."

So is it worth the $? If I had to spend my own money, no. If someone else's paying for it, yes.

That said, I'm still glad I spent the three months learning the concepts and playing with the tools on a virtual environment.

ptilsen

Your thoughts pretty much echo what I've read all of this site and others. I'm already convinced that CEH is best skipped if you can get SSCP, CISSP, CASP, or even GIAC certs. Edit: Unless, of course, it's on someone else's dime. In that case, it's worth it.

Chivalry1

The exam is quite distracting with the grammatical errors all over the place. I heard that this was due to foreigns writers developing the questions. This would explain why my certificate shipped from "Hong Kong".

I feel that the certification material itself is quite beneficial. I took the exam after completing my CISSP, and I must say I learned a lot. Mainly the 'how to' and 'details' about certain attacks. CISSP did not go into this level of detail; but it is a beast within itself. Prior work experience and CISSP help me pass the exam however.

All in All I think its worth taking and studying for the exam. I would not recommend taking the class. I heard the GIAC certification offered the same level detail. I plan on taking this someday in the future. I still rate this exam/certification as my 2nd favorite exam.