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Well .. it’s back again! The premiere SANS event in Australia (for me at least). This is where I first started my journey with SANS and I’ve never looked back since.

The SANS courses have to contain some of the best material I’ve come across, and the instructors are all awesome. These guys aren’t just old instructors that used to be in the “Security” field .. these are guys that live and breathe security.

A quick story .. Last year I sat a CISSP bootcamp (obviously getting ready for the CISSP exam), the lecturer knew his stuff (I’ll give him that) but he had no idea about some of the new security risks and vulnerabilities (he was pretty old school and out of date). When asked he struggled, and it ended up being the students who answered the questions. All in all .. it was a bit of a snoozefest (thank god they had good food there), I would’ve gotten the same information from reading a Shon Harris book. Then 6 weeks later I headed off to SANS in Canberra, Stephen Sims was our instructor. He was a cool young guy that knew A LOT! He had some great stories, did some awesome demos, and really kept our attention for the whole 6 days without anyone getting bored and wandering off. I was so impressed with this course. I can’t say enough about it, it’s something I never shut up about when asked.

You can read my original thoughts and so forth on last years SANS event HERE

I ended up passing my exam last year with flying colours .. and got accepted to be a SANS local mentor for the SEC401 course.

I can’t wait for this years conference, it’s a great place to learn a lot of new stuff, meet a tonne of invaluable contacts, and have an absolute blast! Unfortunately the training budget is blown this year .. so I might have to be *cough cough* sick for the week and send myself down there (I’ll camp in a tent if I have to – could be a bit cold though). I’ll make it there one way or another!

For more information on SANS Canberra head over to HERE

Hope to see you all there … and remember, if you can’t make it, you can always do a mentored class, or try one of the other courses that don’t require travel (you can even get a free iPod nano with your training course on it now!). More information can be found HERE

Well, I guess it had to happen. Seeing as I just passed the CISM exam I’ve decided to go and do the CISA exam. All in all I probably should have done it the other way round .. but where I worked they thought it would be more beneficial if I did a CISM. They could be right .. I’m not too convinced though.

So I signed up today to sit the June 2009 exam, got myself a copy of the study guide and the practice questions database. I don’t believe I’ll have much trouble with this one, it all looks pretty straight forward and it’s stuff that I do everyday at work.

I’ll maybe get a copy of the CBT Nuggets prep stuff, it was pretty handy to have when I did the CISM .. I put a copy of all the video files onto my iPhone so I could watch them while I was at the gym. I guess I used a similar technique as when I was studying for the CISSP exam, I bombarded myself with information at all times (just hoping that some of it would stick), it’s kind of like that episode of the Simpsons when Homer gets the subliminal tapes t listen to while he’s sleeping (only mine aren’t a weight loss tape).

I’ll put all my notes up on zoho again as a few people have found it useful.

Anyway .. more news as I get my stuff and start actually doing some study (at least I’ll make sure I don’t leave it all till the last minute).

Peace out nerdlingers!