I read a lot of threads on this forum regarding the CEHv9 and they made me nervous. I felt like I needed to perform a lot of research outside of the course material or I wouldn't be prepared for the exam. The boot camp I attended pays for the second attempt if you fail, so I decided to go for it without the extra research. I used the following to study:
- v8 Practice Questions
- Boson ExamSim (questions are crazy hard (in-depth) so if you do well on those, you should be fine for the exam)
- CEHv9 training materials from EC-Council. NOTE: There are two versions of the material. One set of slides matches the instructor slides, which contain no explanations of the subject matter. The other set (the ones you download from Aspen) contain the explanations, and that's where all of the detailed questions/answers come from.
- Boot camp (good if you have experience and just need help with specific topics or guidance on what to focus on).
- CBT Nuggets (they only have v
for more info on topics that weren't crystal clear to me.
The exam:
I really don't 'understand why people are so upset about it. I didn't see anything on there that I hadn't seen while studying. It's obvious that most people will be stronger in some areas over others (for example, my background is in networking and I HATE the web and database stuff), so it's important to know your weaknesses and focus on them. All of the posts I read were accurate a far as what to study. If you've studied for your CISSP, it's incredibly helpful with threat/risk/vulnerability questions. I found those pretty simple.
In closing, I just want to say that I've read about people studying for months, even years for CEH and CISSP exams. Neither of these exams are easy and I really don't think you'd be able to pass either of them by simply cramming with brain **** (honestly, why would you want to do that anyway?), but I really don't think it's about how long you study. It's about HOW you study, WHAT you study, and how that information applies to your current knowledge. Studying has to be effective. I studied for my CISSP for two months, and my CEH for 1 week (17 hours a day studying - dreadful, lol). The trick is, be confident in the areas you know, and gain as much confidence as you can in the areas that you don't know so well. And I echo everyone in this forum that has advised again noobs taking this exam. I can't even imagine how stressful that would be, and you won't get much out of the material without having real world situations to relate to.
My to and a half cents....
