Taking the Security+ on Thurday, some advice?

cheeblie

I'll be taking the Security+ exam on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. PST (Thought everyone should know ) I've studying a lot the last week (At least 2 hours a day) primarily from my Exam Cram 2 book. Any areas I was uncertain on, I managed to find some online references, mainly Microsoft white pages, that cleared up a lot misunderstanding with things such as PKI and Kerberos. I have also acquired some practice tests and a PDF study guide written by the great Tcat and friends. Despite all my studying and high practice test scores, I am very worried that I will not pass. I have read posts in many forums stating that this is by far the most difficult exam CompTIA has to offer, especially considering the 83% required to pass. If anyone has any advice on what I should do please reply. Also, if there are lots of questions on ports I would like to know. I had no problems with A+ and Network+ port questions, but these seem to become more and more obscure. Well, hopefully my $195 won't go to waste. My parents will be pissed (Parents--->). I'll appreciate any input.

Thanks,
Cheeblie

RussS

Ohhh Kayyy - first off ..... symmetric and asymmetric - know the dufference and be able to differentiate between the two - including which methods are each. (my biggest problem).

Asymmetric = 2 keys, public & private keys
Symmetric = 1 key = single secret key

Asymmetric Encryption
RSA – (Rivest, Shamir and Adelman) used is many web browsers that use SSL.
Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC) – for smaller processing capabilities such as PDA’s and cellphones etc.
El Gamal
DSA/DSS
Diffie-Hellman – used in PKI

Symmetric Encryption
DES – 64-bit block and 56-bit key. Requires both the sender and receiver to possess the same secret key.
Triple DES (3DES) – 168-bit encryption standard – considered 256 times stronger than DES. 3DES is about 3 times slower than DES to encrypt/decrypt and is considered safe enough for financial institutions.
AES – symmetric cipher block with variable block and key lengths – 128, 192 and 256.
Blowfish – block cipher that uses 63-bit blocks of data, a 448-bit key length and 16 rounds of cryptography computations.
IDEA – 64-bit data blocks and 128-bit key length. The data blocks are split into 16 smaller sections and subjected to 8 rounds of computation. IDEA is used in PGP.
RC5 – assorted data block sizes (32, 64, 12 and computational rounds from 0 – 255-bits. With a key length from 0 – 2,048-bits this leads to good flexibility in levels of security and efficiency.
Skipjack – 64-bit data blocks and 80-bit key with 32 computational rounds



Ports ....

7 – Echo (Ping)
20 – FTP Active Control Port
21 – FTP Active Control Data Port
22 – SSH Secure Shell (L2TP – TCP)
23 - Telnet
25 – SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
53 - DNS
67 – BOOTP – Server
68 – BOOTP- Client
69 – TFTP – Trivial File Transfer Protocol
70 - Gopher
79 - Finger
80 – HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
88 – Kerberos (TCP & UDP)
110 – POP3 Post Office Protocol
111 – RPC Unix (Remote Procedure Call)
119 – NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol
123 – NTP
135 – RPC Locator service (Windows NT only)
137 – NetBios Name
138 – NetBios Datagram
139 – NetBios Service
143 – IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol
161 – SNTP
389 – LDAP (TCP)
443 – SSL Secure Socket Layer ( HTTPS )
500 – ISAKMP/IKE
530 – Remote Procedure Call (RPC) – Win NT WinLogon + other high-level network applications
1071 – L2TP (UDP)
1293 – IPSec (TCP & UDP)
1701-L2F (TCP)
1723 – PPTP (TCP)
3389 – Windows Terminal Services (RDP protocol)
4500 – ISAKMP/IKE (with NAT) .... Outside of those I wouldn't worry.

MAC, DAC AND RBAC

Funny as it may seem - remember your types of backup and RAID formats.

Thats the main things to remember I reckon .

Finally - best of luck

cheeblie

RussS, I have another question. On many of my practice tests they mention RAID arrays other than 0, 1, 5, and 10. Are questions about RAID arrays such as 2, 4, 6, or 7 going to be on the test? I was assuming not because neither A+ or Network+ dealt with them for the simple fact that they are not used in the workplace. Some quick input would be great, because I'm taking this test in the morning.

Thanks,

Cheeblie

RussS

Yes they do. I can't remember a specific question myself, but I know of a couple people who have had RAID questions. I do think that if you are familiar with the basic RAID levels and know the difference between mirroring, striping etc. then you should be ok.

http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html

Azam

I wish you all the best man!

RussS

Ya, forgot to say that. Now I am walking around here on tenderhooks waiting to hear how he got on.

Webmaster

Yeah Cheeblie, good luck! Bring back some good news

Wyldstar

good luck on the test today~!

hope all goes well.

- WS