ISS degree need some insight

gow75

I have an ISS BS degree from ITT. I got my degree back in 06. From my personal experience of what people say about ITT they are wrong. you get out what you put in. I have strong interview skills and also technical as well. I studied my ass off and actually learned something instead of wasting my time and the instructors. I did not go to school in that it would land me a job because i have a degree, yes i agree only some ITT students will pay for the degree and say make me smart. that is wrong and unethical. make me smart please takes hard work on your part. At this time i do have great paying job but here is the kicker. I am not satisfied with what i am doing. I am not in a security field. i know most of the time getting the degree really does not land you the job. I have been doing telecom which is farther on the spectrum. I am learning a lot but I mostly have experience in IS, systems administration, backups, disaster recovery, servers, apps, hardware etc. I am really want to get back into the security side of things in some way. the way i am just not sure how to. I have seen that a CISSP is a viable solution but have no where near the experience to get it. Should i go for some certs or is there a diffrent path to take to obtain more experience in Education if i cant get it in the Workplace.

drumrolfe

How long have you been working in telecom? The CISSP requires five total years of experience in at least two of the ten domains.

Here is the list of domains: https://www.isc2.org/cissp-domains/default.aspx

gow75

well i have been doing systems administration, network administration for about 10 years now i am in the telecom/telephony side. I am not doing anything that even pertains to security on a secure level, only basic things such as user account controls thats about it. so my sec side is lacking big time. I also know that it requires programming abiltiy which i lack as well. I did take a VB class and hated it not my cup of tea. so im trying to figure out another road to take my journey on. thanks

EZ21

ITT is not a legitimate college. Your degree is only worth the paper its printed on. You will understand this either sooner or later, hopefully sooner though.

ptilsen

First, I'll address the more important concern of infosec experience for CISSP. If you have been doing Systems administration, with a part of your duties including managing accounts, group membership, & GPOs in AD, this generally falls under the Access Control domain, as I understand it. This means you do have experience. I have never worked in a purely infosec role, but I intend to sit for the CISSP in 2013 or 2014, based on hitting five years of systems administration.

Regarding ITT, I have a lot to say. As someone who has been gainfully employed in this field for the better part of seven years, I can tell you without a doubt that my $38,000 AAS in Computer Network Systems from ITT Technical Institute is next to worthless. There is only a very limited set of jobs that is fulfills an actual requirement for. As far as the actual education, I had a couple of great adjuncts from whom I learned a lot. My Economics & Math teacher was the best I've ever had, and I had an excellent Cisco teacher (forget what they call the class, but it's basically ICND1 in disguise) who was a CISSP, CCNP, MCSE with 20+ years in the field. He really taught me some of what I was missing in networking and helped mentor me. Most of the rest of my instructors were either:
A. Less knowledgeable about the subjects they taught than I was (and am)
B. Not good at teaching
C. Didn't really care

The curriculum for most classes was also pretty bad. I mean, in 2010 they were still teaching a class that was meant to correlate to 70-293, years after the 70-64x series of exams was released. The curricula were almost entirely based off of certification exams (Net+, Linux+, A+, 70-270, 70-290, 291, 293, ICND1, ICND2), but there was no actual direction to get those certifications, and most of the classes would not have prepared anyone for these exams any more than self-study would. The only positive aspect of this is that ITT lets you test out of these classes, and the tests are actually easier than the certs IMO (I tested out of four classes).

Getting past the extremely diverse quality of the instructors and curricula, the fact of the matter is that a four-year degree from ITT is almost worthless. Again, it fulfills a "requirement" for some job and is probably seen as better than a two-year degree or no degree, in most cases. If you have certifications, skill, experience, and a good resume I am pretty much just as likely to hire you without that ITT degree. So you'll still have about the same shot and about the same job but without the $80K in debt. Even if you make $10K a year less without the degree, it would still make more sense to go to a real school for 1/4 the price and take twice as long. Saying you take eight years instead of four, you're talking about $20K instead of $80K for a loss of only $40K in salary.

That example is ridiculous, of course, since the ITT degree won't make you worth $10K more and a degree from a better, cheaper school won't take twice as long. Anyway, to end my ranting, the point here is that an $20K+-a-year degree from ITT is never going to be effective RoI. Even if the education were better, there are other options available for less money. Even if you still go to another nationally accredited, for-profit school with a poor reputation, at least it won't cost $80K. Most of them cost half that or less.

gow75

I already have the degree! so i am already in debt like everyone else who got suckered into it. yes i know it is worthless to a point. it fills a requirement sometimes though i could have not got a job if i did not have a BS (bowlshit) degree so i think it does help in some instances. other than that i agree with what most you have said ptilsen. but what i am looking for is what can i do to better my skills by either getting certs, use training material that i have which ranges from Visual studio to A+ etc and i have lots videos, ebooks etc. I just dont think any degree is worthless unless you put the work into learning the material and yes i learned a lot and yes ITT has instructors that are worthless, lazy etc all schools have them. my calculus teacher was really good so i can yes i know calculus but not because he taught me but because he pushed me to learn it and i pushed my self to learn it. im just looking for some forsight to push my career in the right direction whatever that maybe. I get lots of questions like why are you now majoring in or learning in on particular skill like say JAVA well i get bored and also i like to learn about everything technology related except code for some reason CODE just gets me its a right brain of thinking and i get lost in the translation. in this day and age is it worth to get the CISSP economy etc... job prospects. should i get Security + cert you know what i mean. I need to find some kind of focus on one thing at a time instead of trying to learn Citrix presnetation server in a training video or learning Ajax in visual studio see where im going with this.

EZ21

ptilsen wrote: »

First, I'll address the more important concern of infosec experience for CISSP. If you have been doing Systems administration, with a part of your duties including managing accounts, group membership, & GPOs in AD, this generally falls under the Access Control domain, as I understand it. This means you do have experience. I have never worked in a purely infosec role, but I intend to sit for the CISSP in 2013 or 2014, based on hitting five years of systems administration.

Regarding ITT, I have a lot to say. As someone who has been gainfully employed in this field for the better part of seven years, I can tell you without a doubt that my $38,000 AAS in Computer Network Systems from ITT Technical Institute is next to worthless. There is only a very limited set of jobs that is fulfills an actual requirement for. As far as the actual education, I had a couple of great adjuncts from whom I learned a lot. My Economics & Math teacher was the best I've ever had, and I had an excellent Cisco teacher (forget what they call the class, but it's basically ICND1 in disguise) who was a CISSP, CCNP, MCSE with 20+ years in the field. He really taught me some of what I was missing in networking and helped mentor me. Most of the rest of my instructors were either:
A. Less knowledgeable about the subjects they taught than I was (and am)
B. Not good at teaching
C. Didn't really care

The curriculum for most classes was also pretty bad. I mean, in 2010 they were still teaching a class that was meant to correlate to 70-293, years after the 70-64x series of exams was released. The curricula were almost entirely based off of certification exams (Net+, Linux+, A+, 70-270, 70-290, 291, 293, ICND1, ICND2), but there was no actual direction to get those certifications, and most of the classes would not have prepared anyone for these exams any more than self-study would. The only positive aspect of this is that ITT lets you test out of these classes, and the tests are actually easier than the certs IMO (I tested out of four classes).

Getting past the extremely diverse quality of the instructors and curricula, the fact of the matter is that a four-year degree from ITT is almost worthless. Again, it fulfills a "requirement" for some job and is probably seen as better than a two-year degree or no degree, in most cases. If you have certifications, skill, experience, and a good resume I am pretty much just as likely to hire you without that ITT degree. So you'll still have about the same shot and about the same job but without the $80K in debt. Even if you make $10K a year less without the degree, it would still make more sense to go to a real school for 1/4 the price and take twice as long. Saying you take eight years instead of four, you're talking about $20K instead of $80K for a loss of only $40K in salary.

That example is ridiculous, of course, since the ITT degree won't make you worth $10K more and a degree from a better, cheaper school won't take twice as long. Anyway, to end my ranting, the point here is that an $20K+-a-year degree from ITT is never going to be effective RoI. Even if the education were better, there are other options available for less money. Even if you still go to another nationally accredited, for-profit school with a poor reputation, at least it won't cost $80K. Most of them cost half that or less.

+1 well said