Gcih - sans 504

laughing_man

Just signed up for SANS SEC504 with a GCIH attempt. Can't wait to get the books and study hard

I will post with my progress and impressions for those who are interested.

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

laughing_man

I took about 3 hours 15 minutes on my final and my practice tests were in that ballpark. The second practice took me 3 1/2 hours, but I had been sick that day so I was not in the best shape for test taking.

That said, I feel I probably take my time compared to others. If I dead know it I answer it, but generally even if I am 99% sure of the answer, I might still look it up just to make sure, even on the practice tests. There are enough that I "know" to give me the extra 30-45 seconds each question to do that. Only a few questions had me frantically searching my index/books for clues.

All things considered, I feel you have plenty of time with this test, so take advantage of it.

laughing_man

Oh and a great tip I picked up from cyberguypr: make a list of all the attacks with their prep, containment, eradication and recovery steps. Very useful.

bkhayes

laughing_man wrote: »

Oh and a great tip I picked up from cyberguypr: make a list of all the attacks with their prep, containment, eradication and recovery steps. Very useful.

very good. i'm in the process of making my index now. i will post it here for review by all. i thought i was gonna have it done sooner but i need more time. but glad you passed it man. good job.

bkhayes

laughing_man wrote: »

Just got back from my test. Passed with a 90%. I have to say I keep feeling like the practice tests are harder than the real thing. For GSEC I had 2 practice tests, scored 83% and 88% on the practices and a 93% on the real thing. This time around for GCIH, I scored 81% on both my practice tests (I was really disheartened by that second 81%). The real test was much easier. I was at 100% for the first 30 questions and then hovered in the low 90s/high 80s for the rest of the test.

Anyway, glad to be done.

Study suggestions for future test takers:

Make a solid index (mine was a bit overkill at 40 pages). Basically if it was a proper noun, I made an entry. Creating the index is the single most helpful thing you can do while studying.

READ ALL THE BOOKS

When you have done that, read them again!

Give yourself plenty of time. I used all 4 months for study time and put probably over 100 hours into studying.

I think if you read the books through, make an in depth index and go over the ins and outs of the attack methodologies, you will do fine.

Thats all for now. I will be prepping for the CISSP next and then who knows

I'm preparing for the GCIH exam for June 30th - I just took 1 practice GCIH exam. and i didn't do well on it. I got 50%. maybe i should have studied a bit more? but according to some people here - the practice exams are tougher than the real test? is that about correct. also - there were questions where maybe i spent to much time on them because i didn't know the answer very well. and i skipped questions too. for those who have taken the practice and real exams what is about the average amount of time i should spend per question? because i felt rushed at some tpoints. i basically panicked during this exam and accepted the fact that i wasn't gonna pass it at all - so i basically copy pasted all the question i know i didn't have answers to into a word file so i could study them. i also ran out of time and ended up rushing thru the test just the copy all the questions - i see the importance of an index. my index wasn't totally complete yet - i just had summary pages and i wanted to get a feel for how hard the test would be. and for me it was. i have an idea. i will group the questions according to the report i get about the weak areas i didn't answer very well in. and now i have a better idea of how i should organize my index so that when i see a key word or a concept i can find it in the book. anybody else here take both practice exams and pass the test have advice for me?

idevuser

Tell me your email, I will send you a few samples of full index just for an idea.

bkhayes

idevuser wrote: »

Tell me your email, I will send you a few samples of full index just for an idea.

thanks. i just Pm'ed & emailed u. you. thanks so much.

Mady123

Hi

Can anyone help me share their Index for sans 504, I have 70 plus pages so far and it is never ending.pls

docrice

In my opinion, an index should never be more than 20 - 30 pages tops. My indexes in recent years haven't been more than 5 - 10. I almost never rely on them during the exam anymore.

quogue66

GCIH was my first security cert and my index was around 10 pages. My index for GCFA was 32 pages and I think that was overkill. I probably referenced about a page worth of terms.