All WAS quiet

All was quiet on the exam front. I took it. I thought I had failed miserably. I read and re-read all of the post exam quotes that said that you come out of the test feeling like you have no idea how you did. I was 80-20 that I had failed. I was wrong. I got the confirmation email yesterday. Why I didn't post yesterday is due to one of the worst headaches in recent memory. I was barely functional for most of the work day.

Now comes the fun part. Getting someone to vouch for my professional and moral character. How hard is that gonna be? I wonder if there is a time limit on finding someone and begging, errr I mean asking them to send in the appropriate paperwork.

2-3 more weeks and it will be official, as long as no one decides to back out on the sponsorship.

Waiting....

I hate waiting....

T minus two and counting

Ah yes, 48 hours till Exam time. I am really wishing it was today instead. I am starting to go over the same things again and again in the attempt to sharpen any weak areas. I will have the weak areas, don't get me wrong, its just that I think I need to stay away from trying to cram them right now.

More later...

Down to the wire

Well, after a weekend of practice tests and hammering down the Orange Book classifications, its not onto sharpening Crypto skills and making sure Access Control is solid. Then some time with App Dev to round things out. All sprinkled with practice tests from online and my handy dandy CD that came with the All In One guide. I also have some slide decks that help pinpoint the areas of concern.

The practice tests are not going too badly actually. Hitting in the 80's most of the time. Every once in a while I catch myself making a stupid mistake like reading thru the question and not seeing the double negative or catching the first answer I see that fits without comparing it to the other answers and I pay for it in the scores. These practice tests are more about getting the format and the rythm down than it is seeing the same answers over and over again. If you are memorizing answers then I have a feeling that this test will NOT be for you.

Man, this too early for this...

Here is the early morning edition....dateline dining room table....11pm on an otherwise quiet Monday evening. 24 has just ended and the adrenaline is pumping. No better time to tackle the ins and outs of the OSI model. It should be easy. The layers themselves are a no brainer. Its the danged protocols and sub-layers that are getting to me. I know that the physical layer is on the wire. The layer that handles the voltage. The top most layer, the application layer is another easy one. Its the one closest to the user. HTTP, SNMP, SMTP, and the such. The presentation layer, another easy one, NO protocols just services. JPG, TIFF, etc..... Session layer, application to application traffic cop. RPC, and SQL play there. So far so good. Transport layer, the computer to computer traffic cop. Now the protocols get a little fuzzy but I found a way around that. The T in transport leads me to TCP which helps me with UDP. TCP is a connection oriented protocol so the logic stands good there. Now onto the Network layer. And I seem to hit a wall right here. Data Link layer...same thing. I know that the data link layer has the sub layer of MAC and one other LLD, I think. But I draw a blank on the protocols for the network and data link layers. I know there is ICMP, IP, IGMP, and the like and I am pretty sure its the network layer for that. What I can't do is provide the details on just WHAT the network layer provides. I can stretch and say that the data link layer provides the LAN/WAN translation and that it draws me to FDDI, etc...you know, the protocols associated with LAN/WAN traffic. But still no confident statement.

These are the struggles I am having. My practice tests are coming along and with less than 2 weeks they better be. This is a stumbling block that I HAVE to get past. Even if there is not ONE question on this exam about the layers, yeah right, I MUST get this down.

Maybe some divine intervention would help.

Keeping up

Keeping up this blog is harder than I had imagined especially when I need to crack the books and take some practice tests. I did find a really good site cccure.org for taking online practice tests. They have the most detailed queries for taking tests. One can drill down and really pound your weaknesses. I also found some random slide decks from various sites such as cissp.com,etc..

All told I have quite a bit more material to pour thru. I guess I better get back to it.

Well...THAT didn't take long

It took exactly one post on here for me to fall off of the wagon. I got caught up last night and studied for oohhhh, about 10 minutes. Not exactly what I would call a marathon session of learning. I got derailed by, of all things, TV. That damned Howie Mandel. How many times have you heard that recently? He hosts a "Millionaire" type game show that is actually quite addicting, at least to me. Then there was 24. The one show on Mondays that I look forward to.

Another nail biting, fast paced, action filled, cell phone battery killin, edge of your seat, episode.

I promise to study tonight for a good two hours after I get home!!!!!!!

Can you spell CISSP?

Today I am going to start the countdown to my CISSP exam on March 18th. That gives me about 3 weeks of whining about how I ain't gonna pass it before the 4-6 weeks of nail biting before I get the "letter" from ISC2 formally stating that I should switch careers and start practicing the phrase "do you want fries with that".

Anyway, I have been studying for about 3 months with an increase in my reading and test taking for the last 45 days or so. I just scheduled the exam, which is the reason for this just now showing up here. I also had my laptop take a dirt nap over a week ago and I am just now getting it back the way I like it. Which, by the way, will most likely contribute to another crash eventually. This is a company provided and owned asset but I tend to personalize it with utililties, applications, etc, etc etc.

Back to the topic at hand. There are 10 domains to this test (which is a 6 hour exam) with 250 questions that require a passing score of 700 to go onto the next step. I say the next step instead of certification because just passing the test does not certify you. Only a trained psychological professional or a loved one with a power of attorney can certify you. Just kidding, after passing the test you have to have someone, a current CISSP, vouch for you. Then yearly, you have to pay dues and continue the education of security. This is all spelled out on the official ISC2 website...www.isc2.org.

Right now, the application dev and cryptology domains are my weakest. App dev for the reason that I just am NOT a developer. The cryptology section more for the terminology that I am unfamiliar with but learning quickly. The test itself is not the normal cert exam that I am used to (I am an MCSE). This is theory and abstraction. CISSP is security as a whole not Cisco, Microsoft, Linux, or any other vendor specific security. It deals with history from the Orange book to ActiveX. From the 7 layers of the OSI model to physical data center design. I have purchased several books and taken countless practice tests. Suffice to say that right now I am cruising at about an 82-85 percent success rate. I will feel confident when I am at 90.

More to come.....

Define "Daily"

Define "daily"

There is a first time for everything

Usually I reserve this area for my opinions, rants, dialogue, ad nauseum, but today I have a link for everyone:

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70041-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

7th paragraph down, near the bottom of the first page. Genius. I love this article.

I would say more but that would be redundant.

Out.

You don't scratch, you pinch and roll

Wow, its been a while. 2 weeks I think. After the holidays there is sort of a letdown and I guess things quieted down enough for me to take a mini-blog-vacation. There is still not much more to whine about or report or blog or chat or tell or talk or whatever. Winter is settling in, although in this little corner of the Mid-west we have been pelted with 50 and 60 degree days. A few cloudy and rainy ones, but that is normal for us. I am just used to it being 35 when it rains, not 55.

Things are progressing well, and by things I mean life in general. The holidays were good, especially to my waistline. The diet talk ends today unless the doctor says otherwise. Its time to adjust the lifestyle and stick with it.

Pretty soon, my geekiness will be ratched up a level with a CISSP cert. I already claim enough DRP, IR, RA and the like to cover most domains but some formal training would not hurt before I dip into the pocketbook to the tune of 500 for the test. I will continue to read and read some more along with some practice tests. Maybe I can keep that sort of diary instead of the eating kind. Yeah, right. I do such a great job keeping up with the posts here, I am sure that everyone will just be riveted as I attempt to update my geek study habits with the world. The anticipated exciteme kinda makes 24 sound like a re-run of PBS' "watching grass grow".