innismir.net

I was very lucky this summer because the Security Office got some funding for training and footed the bill for another SANS course. I opted to go for SANS SEC504: Hacker Techniques, Exploits & Incident Handling. I did a “At Home” course this time, which met three times a week online and was taught Ed Skoudis and John Strand. While I did like the self paced learning that I had for SEC503, but it was very cool to be taught by the folks that you always heard on and about PSW. Plus, I was able to make snide remarks in the chat window.

As much as I still wonder about certifications in general, I am starting to really like SANS courses. The course wasted little time on the basics and quickly had us rolling up our sleeves mucking about in what I classify as “cool sh*t”. While I did have stretches where I was just nodding and going “yeah… yeah… know that… uh-huh…” I would occasionally see or hear something, go “Oooh!”, and make write down some notes. The course consisted of 5 books of material, ranging from incident planning and handling to how to exploit systems, and then culminated in a capture the flag contest. I am ashamed to say the CTF was designed well enough that I could barely establish a toehold on the first server, I guess my days of staying up for an entire weekend and dominating the CTF at Northeastern is far behind me.

Although the course itself wrapped up sometime in the summer, I finally took my certification test today and passed with flying colors. I am happy to report that I have even more alphabet soup after my name and I am now “Ben Jackson, GCIA, GCIH”