GSNA Experience
After passing my GSNA exam this morning, I thought I'd share my experience studying for and taking the exam.
Conducting some intial research of the SANS program, it seemed as though a lot of my co-workers had SANS plaques on their walls. Mostly GWAPS, and GPENS, and a few GCIAs here and there. I heard great things about the conferences they had attended, and the knowledge they had gained, so I figured I'd see what all the fuss was about and see what SANS had to offer.
Looking at the SANS web site, there were several training options available, including live, on demand, and the self-study options. I was somewhat surprised, that from a price perspective, the cost of the training itself was roughly the same for the live training, as it was for the on demand, and self study options.
Due to my own contraints of not wanting to take vacation time for training or pay for hotel accomodations out of pocket, I chose the self-study option. The cost of the self study material was $3,536 which includes 7 books and 2 CD's, along with streaming audio, and 2 practice tests. The exam attempt was an additional $549.
The books and accompanying CD arrived in roughly a week after ordering on-line. The books that arrived were little more than soft covered, bound, black and white printouts of the power point slides, with a roughly a half a page explanation of the slide being covered. In addition, there were several gramatical, typographical and even a few technical errors that I caught. That said, I was generally satisfied with the overall content- especially the non-technical, day 1 book, that really got into the meat of a working audit program.
The following 5 books were more technical in nature, and included perimeter, web, unix, and window auditing specifics which were very tool oriented. In fact, I can honestly say that the rest of the course content mirrored what you would find in your typical CEH class. However, to the course's credit, the Windows and Unix books did spend a lof of pages covering batch/bash scripting, which I found interesting. Also, worth noting is that the individual books were written by different people, so the content's voice and flow really wasn't consistent across books as it could have been.
The course content also included a lab book, which offered lots of "hands on" auditing opportunities on linux VMware images included on the CD. A point worth noting however, is that my lab book didn't match up with the CD's containing the virtual images, which made it a very frustrating experience, until I realized that I had received an out of date version of the CD.
SANS was prompt about replacing the old CD with a new CD, after I e-mailed them about the descrepancy. However, after receiving the new CD, I became painfully aware just how old my machine was because the latest version of VMware required to run the virtual machines on the new CD required a dual core processor. Unfortunately, with my P4 1.8 processor, I now lacked the required hardware. I e-mailed SANS again, and they sent me an older lab manual that was compatible with the older version of VMware that came with the first CD that did work with my older computer.
Also included was a streaming audio version of an actual live SANS course. Sadly, the audio quality was pretty poor, and it was kind of hard to understand the instructor, especially when he was addressing a question of another student. The questions were never repeated by the instructor, so you were kind of left guessing at what he was addressing. The contents of the audio feed, roughly matched that of the book. Overal, not much value-add.
Prior to taking the exam, you also have the opportunity to take 2 practice exams. For the first practice exam, I went through it without using any books. It took me roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes to go through the questions. I scored a 78, the first go around.
Taking the second practice exam, I was somewhat dismayed to find that it was esentially identical to the first test... same question bank apparently. Using the book, I scored an 89, so I figured I was ready for the exam.
The exam itself was open book. I had spent a week or so prior creating an index, with basically the topic, page number, and then associated tool and/or term. It proved helpful, although I found myself second guessing myself more than I should have, and going back to the book more often than I needed to verify.
The exam offers a timer, and progress indicator giving you a good idea of how many questions you've answered correctly. For whatever reason, both made me very anxious. So anxious, in fact that 30 minutes into the exam, I started feeling light headed. My feet, legs, and arms were tingling and I started sweating profusely. It felt like I was moving too slow, even though I was on pace to finish the exam on time.
After the first 35 minutes, my score was at 100%. I decided at that point, not to use the books unless I was clueless as to what the answer was. I finished the remainder to the exam in 60 minutes. I started feeling less anxious towards the end and finished with a strong passing score. I believe I could have done better, if I had taken more time, but at that point, I just wanted to finish. After the test concluded, I felt fine.
In retrospect, was the self-study material worth the cost? I wouldn't recommend it... If you're getting SANS training, I'd recommend going to the live event. The self study material felt more or less thrown together as an after thought.
Hope this helps someone out there. On to my CCNP recertification.
