Taking JNCIE-SEC today

As many of you might have noticed, I've been a little absent lately in the forums, but it's been for a good reason - today I'm taking a shot at the JNCIE-SEC exam. I start in about 1/2 hr and I think I'm ready. I guess I'll know for sure when I see those exam papers.

Good news is that I was able to actually get some decent sleep last night, about 7 hrs. My last lab exam, which I surprisingly passed, was the JNCIE-ER lab, in which I had heart burn from hell that kept me up all night long.

So, wish me luck and I'll update everybody with how it went when I'm done.

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jdstarns

Good luck!

networker050184

Good luck!

JDMurray

No word yet? How long is the JNCIE-SEC exam?

Aldur

hehe, it's just a small little 8 hr exam, nothing too special.

I do have to say though, that was a tough exam. I did take the alpha about 1 1/2 yrs ago, which I failed, but I wasn't even close to ready then. And so the exam version I got was completely different then what I remember, which is to be expected. But the good news is that I feel really positive about it and I think I will get a passing grade.

I was able to finish the exam before lunch, which gave me 4 hrs to review my work, which was a good thing. I kept on finding tiny little mistakes all over the place that would have resulted in lots of missed points. Suffice it to say that after 4 hours of reviewing my work I think I caught all the little mistakes. Now it's time to sit back and wait for the results.

JDMurray

Congratz on surviving it! How long does does it usually take to get the scoring report?

nel

Aldur wrote: »

hehe, it's just a small little 8 hr exam, nothing too special.

I do have to say though, that was a tough exam. I did take the alpha about 1 1/2 yrs ago, which I failed, but I wasn't even close to ready then. And so the exam version I got was completely different then what I remember, which is to be expected. But the good news is that I feel really positive about it and I think I will get a passing grade.

I was able to finish the exam before lunch, which gave me 4 hrs to review my work, which was a good thing. I kept on finding tiny little mistakes all over the place that would have resulted in lots of missed points. Suffice it to say that after 4 hours of reviewing my work I think I caught all the little mistakes. Now it's time to sit back and wait for the results.

Best of luck mate!

jdstarns

JDMurray wrote: »

Congratz on surviving it! How long does does it usually take to get the scoring report?

I believe it takes a few weeks.

Aldur

Thanks everybody for the congrats and good lucks

Yeah, from what I understand it takes a couple of weeks. However, it might be sooner, we'll see.

Now I just need to stop second guessing myself, I keep going over the exam in my head and thinking of things that I possibly forgot. I feel like I did really well and just need to hold on to that.

Ahriakin

I'd wish you luck but it sounds like you don't need it, well...anyway....good luck (just in case)

zoidberg

Ah, the horrible horrible horrible waiting. You walk out of the lab all happy, excited, and optimistic. Then after hearing nothing week after week after week, you're all depressed, mopey, and everything is doom and gloom. But then after 6 weeks you finally get the results and you're on top of the world!

Good job on the lab, I'm sure you got it and hopefully it doesn't take you too long to find out. It took me 6 weeks back in Dec/Jan, a buddy did his a couple months ago and it was only a few weeks, so hopefully you will hear back soon. And you should still be able to score another sexy 2-digit number at this point

Aldur

Good news! I found out that I did indeed pass my exam! Talk about an agonizing wait, even though it wasn't that long. I remember at one point telling my wife that I think that I forgot to apply IDP in a policy, then I got thinking about my other security policies too, and couldn't remember if I had done those correctly. Talk about an idle mind being your own worst enemy.

But now that the worrying is over, and now that I can bask in the light of knowing that I passed. It's time to start stressing about the project that I'm working on, that is slightly behind, but we'll get it done, long hours and all.

Now the question is, what to study next, granted I'm going to take a few months off from studying to spend time with the family and do other fun things, but what would be the next thing. I've really enjoyed security, so I was thinking about pursuing other security related certs. However, my boss mentioned that we need more team member who have *nix skills so it might be better to pick up some Linux certs.

Any suggestions?

JDMurray

Congratulations!

The LPI Linux certs are ones I see talked about after Linux+. I don't know of a true *NIX cert, which is what a Juniper wonk really needs. Maybe there's something mentioned over freebsd.org.

ChooseLife

Congrats! Great achievement!

Re *nix certs - what platform specifically? FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux all have their own certs...

Aldur

Thanks for the congrats guys.

@JD, Very interesting stuff on LPI Linux certs, that's something I'll have to check out. And actually in all of our lab environments we do use Linux, so I'd be more looking at that area.

@ChooseLife, we specifically use CentOS in all of our lab stuff, which I believe that is closely related to Red Hat.

ChooseLife

Aldur wrote: »

@ChooseLife, we specifically use CentOS in all of our lab stuff, which I believe that is closely related to Red Hat.

That makes it easy. There are plenty of resources on RHEL (RedHat Enterprise Linux, which CentOS is based on) - online, in libraries, and bookstores. You can get tons of free materials to study if you want to improve your Linux skills. At the same time, if you or your employer can afford the official training, I heard RedHat courses are highly praised.

If you want to get a cert, you could consider LPI/Linux+/RHCSA. Or you can use study materials for the said certs without taking the exam.

zoidberg

Bravo sir!

Ahriakin

Excellent work!

al3kt.R***

Kudos to you Aldur for your great pass

!!!
Network and System Engineering (MS or Linux) do benefit and complement each other as certs and at work, so good luck at your Linux pursuits (RHCSA is a cool place

to start with, especially if you're already familiar with CentOS).
I hope you fully enjoy the time-off

, though, it's absolutely necessary to keep things well-balanced.

teren

Great news! Congrats

spiderjericho

Congrats, Aldur.

There's definitely quite a few of you Juniper experts on this board.

And good luck to you in your future cert exploits.

Aldur

Thanks for all the congrats

And for the direction of where to go with the Linux study. I'll probably take a month or two off from studying, and a little time off from work too. Then, get right back at it.

If there's one thing I've learned, and learned well, is that burn out is a real thing, and it can happen to even the most highly motivated. Balance is everything.

ChooseLife

Aldur wrote: »

If there's one thing I've learned, and learned well, is that burn out is a real thing, and it can happen to even the most highly motivated. Balance is everything.

Wise words!

Aldur

Woot, just got my number, JNCIE-SEC #67. Love getting a low number for things like this.

nel

congrats dude! awesome news.

IOS2JUNOS

Congrats on passing the lab. I'm about to start studying for the lab myself. what study materials did you use? what gear did you have in your lab? any tips would be appreciated...thx

Aldur

Thanks for the congrats.

For study materials I used the following materials.

Juniper courseware:
Advanced Junos Security (AJSEC)
Junos Security (JSEC)
Junos Unified Thread Management (JUTM)
Junos Intrusion Prevention System (JIPS)

Then Junos Security book was a great reference.

And then I used 7 srx100/210s in a lab to get some hands on practice.

Also, my primary focus at work lately has been to update the security courseware (AJSEC and JSEC) so I've been pretty immersed in SRX related stuff, which helped me get the needed experience.

IOS2JUNOS

cool thanks...

Mirchi

Hi Aldur,

First of all congrats. Would you please tell me you used how many SRX-100H or SRX-100B ? with UTM licences. SRX100 support full UTM features?

Aldur

For gear to study for the JNCIE-SEC I used 5 srx100B's, 1 srx100H's, and 1 srx210H. The 1 srx100H had the UTM license and all the necessary UTM features worked just fine on it. I had the srx210H in there just because it was handy, that could have been replaced with a srx100B and nothing would have been different.

khiemkp

@Aldur: what's the workbook use practice for prepare JNCIE-SEC?