Holidays

First of all, song of the year as chosen in the “A State of Trance” weekly show by Armin van Buuren. I can imagine trance is not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s a nice catchy tune: “Gaia – Tuvan” (click the Play icon to listen).

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As most people this time of the year, I am in vacation but not much relaxation so far. First week we had a little special somebody visiting and among other things we visited “Sensapolis” and I got the do a bit of ice skating.

“Sensapolis” is an interior entertainment park in a huge building somewhere near Stuttgart. It’s a lot of fun for kids of all ages and it features things like a giant spaceship, climbing wall, science center, a Fairytale castle, a pirate ship, tree house and many more. The picture gallery shows you a bit of the place.

During this time we are also working (again) at the house, doing remodeling and other things in the kitchen and bathroom. Freya’s brother is visiting and since he knows a lot more than us at this kind of job (he does this for a living) we kinda “abuse” the poor guy. The kitchen is one of the things we inherited from the creatures who lived here before and it was in dire need of renovation. When it’s done, the ugly brown will be gone and it will look “really pretty”, as Freya puts it. And I completely agree, will post some “before/after” pictures once it’s done.

And of course I am still studying for my Cisco CCIP certification. I am supposed to take one of the exams on the 31st of December, I just hope I will be done by then.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year!

New week

Yeah, this is what the weather looks like these days. It’s rainy, not warm and not nice. Not much is happening otherwise, the weather kinda makes you lame and you have to force yourself to get something done. I feel like sleeping the whole day.

In the meantime I am still studying for my CCIP certification, I plan on taking the MPLS+BGP exam sometime at the end of the year. I set up some gns3/dynamips labs at home and it’s going well.

I want vacation

Preparing for the CCSP Certification

In my previous post I said I will share some info about how I prepared for CCSP, so here it is. First of all, the CCSP certification has CCNA Security as a prerequisite, so you can’t start without that one. Then you need to take 4 more exams, 3 of them are fixed and the last one you can choose out of a list of elective exams.

1. CCNA Security – pre-requisite; Exam 642-553. This one is the entry-level certificate in the security train and introduces you to basic concepts about firewalls, securing the network, VPNs, ACS, network attacks and so on.

   I used the official certification guide book from Cisco Press. I was already familiar with most of the technologies discussed in the book so this was an easy exam but I would say the book is good and you can use it to pass even if you are new to the security field. You do need to have CCNA passed though.

2. IPS (Implementing Cisco Intrusion Prevention System) – mandatory; Exam 642-533. For this one you need to be familiar with the IPS sensors.

   I didn’t have access to something like that to practice so I took the official Cisco class for this exam. It was a 5-day class at Experteach and I would say it did a decent job at preparing me for the exam. It was not exactly cheap though (none of the Cisco classes are).

3. SNRS (Securing Networks with Cisco Routers and Switches) – mandatory; Exam 642-504. This exam builds upon CCNA Security and further introduces you to a bit more advanced concepts like Layer 2 security, network thread mitigation, DMVPN, GETVPN and so on.

   I took the official Cisco class for this one as well but after I finished it, I realized I went there for nothing. Almost everything could’ve been practiced at home in dynamips/gns3. You can easily practice for this one at home based on the exam blueprint.

4. SNAF (Securing Networks with ASA Fundamentals) – mandatory; Exam 642-524.This exam introduces you to the administration, management and troubleshooting of the ASA security appliance.

   For this exam I decided to prepare myself at home and I rented for a week the CCIE Security rack from InternetworkExpert, a 6-hour slot each day. The rack is meant for CCIE practice but it did have all I needed for my exam (2 ASAs, ACS server, IPS sensors). It was really not expensive at all ($15 per day or so) and you get remote access to the rack equipment.

   Having that, based on the exam blueprint, I designed my own practice scenarios and I just used them to practice the various technologies. It was not that bad, you have complete access to the equipment and you can familiarize with them in peace and configure them the way you want.

5. SNAA (Securing Networks with ASA Advanced) – elective; Exam 642-515. This exam builds upon SNAF and introduces you to more advanced ASA topics such as dynamic routing, SSL VPNs, AIP and CSC modules and so on.

   I wanted to study at home for this one as well but I looked around for a while and I ended up buying a one-week SNAA remote lab from NIL. The difference this time was that the lab is specifically tailored to the SNAA exam and they also give you a set of scenarios and exercises you can do, which cover the exam blueprint. Another plus is that once you log into the remote lab, all equipment are already pre-configured and you can start immediately to do your exercises, without wasting time to prepare them.

   And I forgot to mention that for both SNAF and SNAA exams I used the Cisco Press book Cisco ASA: All-in-One Firewall, IPS, and VPN Adaptive Security Appliance. Good book.

And that’s pretty much it. What’s next ? CCIP, which is geared towards service providers and it’s much more related to what I do at work these days.