RE: SANS Certification,

["Nick Duda" <nduda () VistaPrint com>]

As a newly certified GIAC GSEC I can share this...

I opted for the self study. They send you the course material (books,
lots of them, 30+lbs) and you also get the real MP3's from a recent
conference. The MP3's took me over 3 weeks to listen to (comuting
to/from work). They were the conference given by Marc Sachs (very cool
instructor). You also get 4 practice exams and then the real exam (which
was 2 exams).

I did the study material for about 2 months on my own and then did the
exam, and passed. The books and the MP3's (along with real world exp)
made passing the exam so much more awesome.

GIAC GSEC is one of those exams that is truly vendor neutral, as in you
need to know common / general security related stuff...and for the most
part is hard to just google around for. I found many questions along the
lines of something like, "When writing x policy , how would you do
x?"...this is hard to google around for.

While I agree that it looks like you cant take any GIAC exam without
doing some form of SANS specific studying, I think its totally worth the
time/money (money if your company is paying)

- Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: IRM [mailto:irm () iinet net au]
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 5:37 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: SANS Certification,

Hi all,

I have no idea whether it is just me only or people out there are also
finding difficult to understand SANS GIAC certification product.
Basically I am thinking to take GCIA
(http://www.giac.org/reginfo/challenge.php),

I was under impression that the only way to prepare the material is by
going to their conference? CMIIW I am not sure what does it mean by
challenge certification? Is it meaning "You can go for certification
without going to SANS Training"?

I guess that the site is not clear enough, for instance it doesn't show
you the syllabus on what is tested, etc
(http://www.giac.org/certifications/security/gcia.php) or maybe I am
wrong here?

Cheers,

John






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