UPDATE: Well, Thanks to a few tips from the man in the know (see the comments) I passed the exam fairly easily. I was a bit dissapointed that I didn’t hit the magic 90% mark that I was gunning for .. but I guess factoring into account the limited and disjointed time I did have, I can’t complain. I think if I had one more solid day of study .. it could’ve made a big difference. As usual though, when I first started the exam I suffered from a rush of blood/excitement and made some really stupid mistakes early on (just not reading the quetions or answers properly). I finished the exam way within the time limit, there were only a few questions that I had no idea about (my “educated” guesses relly paid off). Big tip is to follow Stephen’s tips below, and definitely mark out all the sections in your books! There is no one section that is more important than the others (although I felt I had more questions from the networking book). Now I just have to wait for the next SANS event in Australia to do my next course/certification.
Well .. due to a few things out of my hands, I now have to put my study for the GSEC certification into over-drive! I was originally aiming for the end of August to sit the exam .. but that’s now been brought forward to the 1st!!
This is how i’m going to attack this exam in the limited time I have (1 week). It’s been suggested that you should really spend a minimum of 70-80hrs study in preparation for this exam.
First up .. Sit one of the practice exams and see how well you know the content (and find the places where you need to really concentrate on). You get 2 practice tests upon completion of the SANS bootcamp .. this will give you a good indication of how you’re going to go. I’ve done this .. and i only scored 72% (70% is a pass) .. so I’m on the line here!
Second up .. Mark relevant sections in all the books. There’s 6 books and it’s an open book exam .. hopefully this will make it a bit easier to zone in on the information I need when I actually sit down to do the exam! It’s a good time to breeze over the info to refresh yourself
Third .. Spend some serious time reading the books .. try and remember where the key information is. Focus heavily on the sections that you didn’t do so wel in on the original test (I HATE YOU CRYPTOGRAPHY!!)
Lastly .. sit the test and PASS!
I’m not really too sure how well this is going to go .. but I really don’t have much choice at the moment. I’ll give you an update after I’ve sat the exam next week!
