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CEH Passed. My Thought and Where do I go from here

IronmanXIronmanX Member Posts: 323 ■■■□□□□□□□
I took the test a little while ago.
This is definitely not a Entry level/Beginner certification. Without experience I don't know how anyone could pass this test.

During the exam I thought i was going to fail. I ended up with 84%, but thought i was in deep trouble for most of the 2 1/2ish hours I was in the exam. It just was not what I expected it would be like from the material and practice tests I took. Most of the questions I was like Wow where was this in the material I covered. At one point i was so sure i was going to fail I was planning on how I could study the material I was being asked about for the next exam even though i had seen no mention of it in the CEH material I covered. I came to the conclusion during the exam that real life experience would be the only way to prepare for these questions.

I took a live in person 5 day CEHv8 course. It was fun and interesting.
I read the Matt Walker All in One CEHv7 book twice
I read the Matt Walker All in One CEHv8 2nd edition book once.
Watched all of the VTC CEHv8 videos
Watched most of the CBT Nugget CEHv8 videos.
I went through the Matt Walker CEHv8 second edition practice exam completely. (Scoring around 90% and taking about an hour)


I enjoyed the course and the books. I have nothing bad to say about them.
The exam was tough and nerve racking, but maybe that is the way it is suppose to be.

This certification does cover the requirements for 4 of the DoD 8570 position, not that this matters for me I'm Canadian. I'm not sure what the requirements are for getting your cert approved by the DoD are but obviously EC Council is doing something right.
It would take 2-3 SANS certs and a ISC2 SSCP to meet the same requirements of CEH.

I would have liked it if the EC Council CEH exam would have followed the material better, or atleast the material i covered better ;) . I think they could have made it just as hard or even harder with tougher questions related to the material. However that would allow someone to pick up a book cram and get the certification. The way they have done it with some many far reaching topics they are ensuring only those will a few years experience can pass.

My personal belief from going though the exam once is that there would be no way that a person with no experience could cram and pass this test, but a person with a lot of experience could do very little studying and pass.

Having passed I'm happy I will no longer have to check off that SSID helps in no way with Wireless security on the practice exams. Someone has had to point out that they are wrong long ago, why do they still insist on making people answer those questions wrong. The Matt Walker book did point this out by saying something along the line of as far as EC Council is concerned SSID do nothing for security.

Why do people complain about the CEH costs? Looks to me like they are one of the cheaper certs/training. Looking into the SANS training/certs it is $5000+ for a 5 day course and the exam costs $1200. I'm not sure if you take the course if the exam is included or cheaper. My instructor for the CEH exam also teaches some courses at the police college. He said he had a few students attend SANS courses and they where very disappointed in the course's lack of depth. Any thought on SANS training?

What do people generally do next after CEH? For me its more about the training then obtaining the cert. Doesn't seem like IT Certs carry that much weight here in Canada as they do elsewhere.

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