holy packet sniffing batman!
My request for the Sourcefire Snort Certified Professional courses/exam, that I posted about earlier, was finally approved, bathed in red tape and finally completed. I received my login information for the courses and certification exam (through vcampus.com). I nervously logged in expecting to see that the account had been created weeks ago, and that I was not going to get the full sixty days; but to my surprise, it was created today! I decided to setup my profile on the vcampus site first, and to my surprise you can change, every aspect of your account, including user name. Being as the original user name and password were sent to me clear text, being able to change them both securely, rocks.
I have not as of yet dived into the course material; I must admit, I’m a little nervous about it. This is the first certification test, that I feel like I am actually going to have to work for. So I am thankful to be able to get the full sixty day period to access the materials.
Extended personal spewing …
Just last week I posted about passing the EC-Council’s CEH certification exam, which everyone tells me I should be really proud of, but I’m again having a hard time taking it seriously. I pretty much walked in and took the test blind. I was able to score 81%, not having attended the four day training course given by the Hacker Academy, nor having access to the course materials. So either a) I know what the hell I am doing or b) The test was bullshit. If the answer is b, that just furthers my distrust of most certifications. Now, that is not to say I do not believe all certifications are too easy/unrealistic. Certifications that are done by the vendor, like Cisco and Sourcefire, say to me, this is what the vendor expects someone to know, that is respectable.
Last week, I was able to attened the Advanced Intrusion Detection week long session, also taught by the Hacker Academy. I was really excited to be able to attend. There was no certification offered for it, so that made it really fun for me, as there were no expectations being placed on me. I really got a chance to confirm that everything I have been learning and practicing with on my home network, wasn’t completely backwards. It was a really really damn fun week. The instructor works in the IT Security industry and really knew his stuff. It was exciting to be able to ask questions and discuss techniques with someone on the same level as me.
So I’m not really sure why I’m so nervous about taking the Snort CP exam, I mean rocked out in the week long class. I’m guessing its mostly due to the course material/exam costing the company $2k. I’ve never (to my knowledge) had an employer pay for something some expensive, that ultimately only benefits me. I am however confident that this nervousness will pass once I get into the material, but with that confidence I need to slow down, and make sure that I really do understand the concepts they want. I only get one chance at the exam, I’m not going to fuck this one up.