CCNA Security: 794 / 1000
aftereffector
Member Posts: 525 ■■■■□□□□□□
So close! Yet so far... I just scored 794 out of a possible 1000 on the 640-554 IINS exam. The passing mark was 804, so I missed it by one percentage point.
I used the Keith Barker / Scott Morris OCG as a study guide, supplemented with some Skillport online training modules (which were buggy, not particularly in-depth, and prone to typos). I ran into one or two questions on the exam which were not covered in the OCG - I just checked the index - but overall the book seemed to track along with the exam fairly well. I aced the simulations but fell short in some areas, notably Common Security Threats (duh!), Common Layer 2 Attacks (duh!), firewall technologies and IPS. I think I was overconfident in the first two domains I just listed and didn't really spend much time reviewing them... I just took CASP and CCNA R&S not long before that, so I figured I already understood security threats and VLANs. Well, I suppose not!
I have a week to cool my heels before re-attempting (and crushing!) the exam, which should be more than enough time to do a comprehensive review of the four domains on which I scored less than 80%. I underestimated this exam a little, and the $250 retest will be a reminder not to underestimate the Voice exam, which is coming up next on my programme.
Back to the books!
I used the Keith Barker / Scott Morris OCG as a study guide, supplemented with some Skillport online training modules (which were buggy, not particularly in-depth, and prone to typos). I ran into one or two questions on the exam which were not covered in the OCG - I just checked the index - but overall the book seemed to track along with the exam fairly well. I aced the simulations but fell short in some areas, notably Common Security Threats (duh!), Common Layer 2 Attacks (duh!), firewall technologies and IPS. I think I was overconfident in the first two domains I just listed and didn't really spend much time reviewing them... I just took CASP and CCNA R&S not long before that, so I figured I already understood security threats and VLANs. Well, I suppose not!
I have a week to cool my heels before re-attempting (and crushing!) the exam, which should be more than enough time to do a comprehensive review of the four domains on which I scored less than 80%. I underestimated this exam a little, and the $250 retest will be a reminder not to underestimate the Voice exam, which is coming up next on my programme.
Back to the books!
CCIE Security - this one might take a while...
Comments
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mistabrumley89 Member Posts: 356 ■■■□□□□□□□Sorry to hear that. Just smooth out your rough areas and you should be fine.Goals: WGU BS: IT-Sec (DONE) | CCIE Written: In Progress
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/charlesbrumley -
RouteMyPacket Member Posts: 1,104It happens but I must ask, where is your focus? You mention wanting to do CCNA Voice next? What do you work with on a day to day basis?Modularity and Design Simplicity:
Think of the 2:00 a.m. test—if you were awakened in the
middle of the night because of a network problem and had to figure out the
traffic flows in your network while you were half asleep, could you do it? -
aftereffector Member Posts: 525 ■■■■□□□□□□I work as essentially the equivalent of a NOC manager in the military. We have some Cisco devices, but I don't get to work with the production stuff because if I did, I would be taking training opportunities away from the soldiers who actually need to be confident with configurations... so I am working on Packet Tracer and about to try and set up a GNS3 environment.
My long term focus is information security, so I took CASP and will be pursuing CISSP later this year, but in the meantime I feel like I need more knowledge of how the network operates at the device level in order to understand how to create and implement policies at the management level. Hence, CCNA R&S, CCNA Security, and Voice to get an introduction to unified communications. I don't plan on doing any more CCNA level tracks until I get enough experience with Cisco devices to work through the CCNP R/S track, and that will be a few years from now.CCIE Security - this one might take a while... -
aftereffector Member Posts: 525 ■■■■□□□□□□Good news from tonight - I passed I wish I could see which ones I got wrong, as I was feeling pretty confident about all but one or two of them.
On to the next challenge!CCIE Security - this one might take a while... -
ednard Member Posts: 75 ■■□□□□□□□□Congratulations. Well done for quickly getting back on the horse and getting it passed!
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DoubleNNs Member Posts: 2,015 ■■■■■□□□□□Congratulations on the pass!!Goals for 2018:
Certs: RHCSA, LFCS: Ubuntu, CNCF CKA, CNCF CKAD | AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, AWS Solutions Architect Pro, AWS Certified Security Specialist, GCP Professional Cloud Architect
Learn: Terraform, Kubernetes, Prometheus & Golang | Improve: Docker, Python Programming
To-do | In Progress | Completed -
SephStorm Member Posts: 1,731 ■■■■■■■□□□congrats, i need to get back in my studies, but you know... SWTOR.
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GreenLantern Member Posts: 54 ■■□□□□□□□□congrats on the pass.In pursuit of CCNA:SECURITY; CCNP; THEN MCSE