New Goal: BS IT-Security at WGU.

[jsd]

i beat you :p

[dfrecore]

i beat you :p

You did! Haha!

[jsd]

This morning I passed the certification for Security+! Collected 4 more CUs.

That's 21 CUs in just under 3 months. Not too shabby.

I got a bit lazy after passing Network+ earlier this month, and the whole week after that exam I didn't do much of anything to study for this one. I'm accelerating but I don't need to finish everything this first term (no way I would be able to anyway), so I'm disappointed that I slowed down, but it's not a big deal and probably good to take a break occasionally and avoid burnout. With that lost week, it took me nearly the whole month to get the Sec+ done (finished Net+ 4/3, finished Sec+ today 4/26).

Okay, 68/123 CUs to go! I won't slack off the rest of the week this time.

[yb1]

This morning I passed the certification for Security+! Collected 4 more CUs.

That's 21 CUs in just under 3 months. Not too shabby.

I got a bit lazy after passing Network+ earlier this month, and the whole week after that exam I didn't do much of anything to study for this one. I'm accelerating but I don't need to finish everything this first term (no way I would be able to anyway), so I'm disappointed that I slowed down, but it's not a big deal and probably good to take a break occasionally and avoid burnout. With that lost week, it took me nearly the whole month to get the Sec+ done (finished Net+ 4/3, finished Sec+ today 4/26).

Okay, 68/123 CUs to go! I won't slack off the rest of the week this time.

Hey would you discuss in detail your study process for the exams? How long do you take? How many hours a day are you at it? Are you studying every day?

Are you taking practice exams?

Are you taking extensive hand written notes?

I am curious on your process.

[theonlyski]

Yeah, depending on which particular IT degree you go for, you could end up with more or less certs (for example my plan replaces two of those useless CIW certs with much more useful -- but intimidating -- CCENT, CCNA, and CCNA Security certs)

Of those three, I had the most trouble with the CCNA, CCENT was just ICND1, CCNA just seemed worse for me (it was too broad). CCNA-Security (IINS) was an absolute cake walk (I had a bad respiratory infection, but still took the test, nailed it and went home for 2-3 days of being miserably sick). The CCNP-R&S tests were harder due to level of knowledge required but easier in the sense that you knew what they're testing on. Routing, switching or troubleshooting.

[jsd]

Hey would you discuss in detail your study process for the exams? How long do you take? How many hours a day are you at it? Are you studying every day?

Are you taking practice exams?

Are you taking extensive hand written notes?

I am curious on your process.

Sure, I can share more details. Are you speaking of the certification exams specifically, or just WGU courses (or both)?

Of those three, I had the most trouble with the CCNA, CCENT was just ICND1, CCNA just seemed worse for me (it was too broad). CCNA-Security (IINS) was an absolute cake walk (I had a bad respiratory infection, but still took the test, nailed it and went home for 2-3 days of being miserably sick). The CCNP-R&S tests were harder due to level of knowledge required but easier in the sense that you knew what they're testing on. Routing, switching or troubleshooting.

This makes me feel a little better. I thought they'd all be really rough. I'll keep that in mind as I start on CCNA. Thanks.

[yb1]

Sure, I can share more details. Are you speaking of the certification exams specifically, or just WGU courses (or both)? .

Actually both. I am thinking of doing something similar but I want to do the new degree. I was talking to an advisor about it and he said he heard that it was a lot of writing and that it focuses more on policy and strategy vs technical.

And you knocked out two certification exams in three months? Are the other classes helpful or do you view them more as filler classes?


Congrats on ssing sec +. Did you watch professor messer for that or just do Daryl Gibson's book?

[Thorne]

This makes me feel a little better. I thought they'd all be really rough. I'll keep that in mind as I start on CCNA. Thanks.

I've gone all the way through the CCNP R&S, and I can confirm some of it. The ICND1 is fairly easy. With the classes I took plus two days studying Pearson's practice tests, pulled a 966/1000. The ICND2 was less so. First time I took it (after the classes at my local CC and a month of studying the book + CBT Nuggets + Pearson practice tests) I failed by 30 points. The second time I took it I got 881/1000 just by brushing up on the technologies that kicked my backside (anything I scored less than a 70% on my score report)

The IINS exam was a pain for me. Not because it was entirely difficult, but because they were so ambiguous. One example (without violating the NDA) was something like this:

What is necessary to configure a Cisco router to support TACACS+? (Choose two)
a. The command aaa new-model must be issued in global configuration mode of the router (this is true)
b. The securityk9 package must be enabled (this is false)
c. The command tacacs-server host ip address must be issued (this is true)
d. An authentication method list must be defined to include a TACACS+ server (this is true)
f. The router must be using IOS 15.1 or later (this is false)

A, C, and D are all accurate, and are all necessary for a router to fully support TACACS+, but they would be looking for A and C. Why? A is correct because configuring ANY AAA feature requires the aaa new-model command to be issued. C is correct because you cannot utilize TACACS+ AT ALL without first defining a server.

In order to get it right, regardless of how well you know the protocol, you would need to mentally restate the question into something like "What are the first two requirements that are necessary to support TACACS+"

/rant

To put it plainly, you can expect a good quarter of your questions to be similarly murky, so just prepare to treat it like a logic exam and you'll do fine (I ended up with 927/1000 in the end, but I only had five minutes left)

Also, JSD, how easy/hard was the CIW test? Is it more process and theory or hands-on technical?

[jsd]

Actually both. I am thinking of doing something similar but I want to do the new degree. I was talking to an advisor about it and he said he heard that it was a lot of writing and that it focuses more on policy and strategy vs technical.

And you knocked out two certification exams in three months? Are the other classes helpful or do you view them more as filler classes?


Congrats on ssing sec +. Did you watch professor messer for that or just do Daryl Gibson's book?

From what I've gathered (though haven't confirmed with a mentor), the new BS in Cybersecurity is heavy in written projects (like you said)... but the core courses for my BS ITsec program are 99% exams/certification exams (only 2 courses have written assignments and one course has a database project). So your mileage may vary a little here.

If you count the CIW certificate, I've got three certs, though the CIW one is pretty useless and was very easy. I also used the same study strategy to get my A+ cert before I was enrolled in WGU, and it took me about two weeks of study each for both exams needed for that cert, so about a month total for A+.

The other classes have been fairly helpful. More of a refresher mostly for someone in the field, but if you're new or trying to break in, I think they're a good starting point. As an example... Embarrassingly enough, I haven't done any programming since tinkering around the late 1990s in Visual Basic of all things, so taking an intro course on Pyhton was great for me. I definitely plan to dive deeper in (when I have free time again of course), but the course was a great starter and whet my appetite for more. I can see some stuff coming up, like Spreadsheets for example, being filler... but I think they mostly did a good job at picking relevant coursework.

I'm averaging about a week for their standard courses, two weeks for a certification course (if you don't count that third Sec+ week were I did almost nothing).

Okay, now to answer your original questions...

Hey would you discuss in detail your study process for the exams? How long do you take? How many hours a day are you at it? Are you studying every day?

Are you taking practice exams?

Are you taking extensive hand written notes?

I am curious on your process.

Keep in mind I work in the field, so I have a leg up on much of the info. If one were starting from scratch, this might be a less effective way to do it. Also, just having a different learning style would make this less effective. Obviously find what's right for you.

I'm a very auditory/visual learner, so things like the Professor Messer series work perfectly for me. I will watch them on a higher speed settings to get through them a little faster. I've never found extensive note-taking effective for me. Since I am more auditory, I likely wouldn't go back and read my notes. I know a lot of people don't actually read their notes and say that the act of writing the info down is the valuable part, even if you don't read it later -- I can see how this would be true, but for me, it's always really taken me way out of the lecture/video and it actually means I pick up less from what is being presented.

But I'd still go through some written material, just to approach it in multiple ways. For A+ this was the Mike Meyers all in one book, for Net+ it was the WGU uCertify material (i wasn't a fan of this), and for Sec+ I skipped the uCertify course and just read the Darril Gibson book. I'd spend about a week on this written stuff, then another week on the videos.

I would take every practice exam I could get my hands on. These were often the more effective means of studying for me, really helped drill the concepts home. Even when i skipped the uCertify content, I was still using their practice exams. There's free ones available at ExamCompass and CrucialExams as well (and they're not braindumps that violate CompTIA's policy and put your cert at revocation risk), but I wouldn't count on those alone. They're a little more surface level. My employer has free Skillsoft/Skillport courses (some libraries do too, if your employer doesn't), and these had a lot of great TestPrep exams. Take as many practice exams as you can.

Like I said, i would watch the messer videos at a high speed, and sometimes I was able to run through the video series twice in one week. To answer how much I'm studying, I commute by train and it's about an hour ride each way, so I'd use that to study and get at least 2 hours in every week day, usually with another 30-60 minutes before I went to sleep. Weekends would vary a lot depending on what I was doing with my family.

For A+ and Net+, I could have passed based on Messer alone. I think it's good I did the reading, but probably didn't have to. Security+ was a little different, and I'm very glad I read Gibson's book. He went more in depth than Messer did, and does a better job explaining real world application of the info. Plus his practice tests are very close to the actual exam questions you'll be seeing. Even though I prefer video/lectures, Gibson was the better way to go here. For the other two, Messer is the way to go.

If there were specific areas I knew I was weak in, I found supplemental study material. With Net+ I probably watched dozens of subnetting videos before it finally clicked for me (though it was kind of in vain since I didn't really have any subnetting on the exam), and for Sec+ I needed more material to make me feel comfortable with cryptography (and again didn't see too much on the exam for it). Some people get a lot of subnetting/cyrpo on their respective exams though, so it's all luck of the draw.

I hope I answered your questions somewhat?

[jsd]

Also, JSD, how easy/hard was the CIW test? Is it more process and theory or hands-on technical?

If you've spent any time tinkering with html then you can probably pass this cold. It has a cut score of 60% and is very, very basic. though i learned HTML before HTML5 so i needed to remember that things like <b> have been replaced by <strong> (at least officially if not in practice), and i needed to brush up on css.

There are some policy questions, like conforming a site to ADA standards that one is likely to be unfamiliar with too, but I don't remember seeing much of that on the exam.

Here's an example question from WGU's material... not a question from the real exam, but a good example of the kind of thing you'll see:

Code:

Which code example demonstrates a valid container or non-empty tag in HTML?

A.   <p>
B.   <meta/>
C.   <p></p>
D.   <br/>


Answer: C

It's a dumb cert though. No one has ever heard of CIW and I can't imagine having this would be of any benefit other than passing a WGU course.