I retired from the Navy in Jan 2002 after serving 20 years as an RM/IT1. Before I retired I certified in Network+, CTT+ and CCNA, and subsequently after retirement I picked up CISSP. My post military careers include Senior Technical Trainer and Information Systems Security Officer for a large government organization. My Navy Medals include Joint Commendation Medal, Joint Achievement Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal (3x) and of course Good Conduct Medals. Dave My preparation for the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) exam including reading Todd Lammale’s CCNA study guide which can be purchased at: Amazon
This is a good first step in your preparations. If you’ve been to the Journeymen Networking Course (JNC) or Advanced Network Analyst (ANA) courses, we used this book to assist in teaching the CCNA topic.
So the book is a great start but if you’re like me you will want some hands on training since there are a couple of simulations on the CCNA exam. If you don’t have access to a couple of routers as was my case I turned to using a router simulator.
In lieu of real equipment, I strongly recommend using which can be found here: RouterSim
So at this point I’ve got the knowledge from the book and the “hands on” from doing all the labs in the RouterSim. The last part of my preparation was to familiarize myself with the style and content of the test questions.
I used the CCNA Questions and Answers (Q&A) from TestKing .More information can be found here: TestKing
I felt extremely confident going in for the exam. I knew the book material, completed the labs and studied the style of questions. I scored a very high score on the exam due to the preparation I undertook.
March 31st I sat for the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) exam. This has been described as the Master Level security certifications. If you are interested in becoming certified in Security, there are various levels of certification.
There’s the COMPTIA Security+ followed by the ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) and finally the ISC2 CISSP exam.
In studying for my CISSP exam I devoted about 3 months of time to completely reading the study guide written by Shon Harris which can be located at: Amazon
This is a thick book and it takes some to read and assimilate all the information, so give yourself plenty of time. I’ve got a decent background in information technology, so I really needed to just put the security pieces into place.
In summary, I pretty much just read Shon’s book and did the end of chapter questions. The test is a grueling 250 questions over a 6 hour period. I took about 4 � hours.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and shipmate I wish you the best of luck in your studies.
Dave