ieeehomelandsecurity2007.org

5 Comments

• Midwest Book Review says:

  February 4, 2010 at 8:14 am

  Michael Watkins and Kevin Wallace, CIE’s CCNA SECURITY: OFFICIAL EXAM CERTIFICATION GUIDE is a study guide that focuses specifically on the objectives for the exam and comes from senior security instructors who help identify weaknesses and improve on concepts and their applications. Chapters cover all the elements and techniques, offer quizzes with each chapters with self-assessment tools for speed and accuracy, and include a companion cd-rom of tests for individual topics. Invaluable for any studying for the exam.
  
  Rating: 5 / 5
• Jonathan Jordan says:

  February 4, 2010 at 10:34 am

  The Cisco books always make great study guides and the test simulator is always nice.
  Rating: 5 / 5
• Netwiz49 says:

  February 4, 2010 at 11:45 am

  Network Security is a very broad topic. Any book that attempts so cover its many aspects is certainly taking on a very difficult task. That being said, how does this book fair? Not thrilling, but not exceptionally bad either. Let’s face it, Cisco exams have become very difficult, and its nearly impossible to pass their exams without arduous effort. One needs good resources (and a good lab). On many of the topics, this book does a reasonable job. My biggest complaint is that its firewall coverage is just terrible. That chapter is confusing, uneven, disorganized, lacking in proper examples and should be completely redone.

  I retired a year ago as a network engineer with 30 years experience, the last 10 as a network security specialist. I’ve decided to do a little consulting work and figured I’d refresh my Cisco certifications to insure I was current. I previously had a CCNP and CCSP (with firewall, VPN, and IDS specializations). I’ve worked on PIX, ASA, Checkpoint, Netscreen, Sonicwall and Fortinet firewalls. I’ve also worked on F5 and IBM application layer gateways (proxies). I’ve taught Information Systems Security at the university level. Needless to say, I felt my background qualifies me to deal with a basic, entry level exam. However, after reading the firewall chapter in this book, I felt totally lost and confused. The Paquet book (“Implementing Cisco IOS Network Security”) does a much better job on all the topics related to firewalls. Read both books and the supporting Cisco documentation on selected topics (like Zone Based Firewalls and CBAC) if you expect to pass this exam. I’ll sit this exam in about two weeks. Hope my experience doesn’t hinder my success.
  Rating: 3 / 5
• J. Slomski Jr. says:

  February 4, 2010 at 12:58 pm

  I read this book, as well as the Exam Cram book for this exam, and studied a little bit from the other CCNA Security book by Richard Deal. Overall I think the Cisco Press book was the best as far as what it covers and how it words things. The key topics are clearly marked throughout the chapters so you can easily flip through the book and review them, this helps keep from having to highlight and mark things on your own. The many screen shots of SDM where helpful and the configuration examples where easy to understand. So yeah, best single study source.

  Some final advice:
  
  I think this book was better than the other two I studied. But I’d suggest studying from at least one other book just to get a different taste of it. You may be able to answer all the questions in this book, but fail miserably at the questions from another book because they’re different. This was a tough exam, I was lucky to have SDM and a router at home to practice the stuff on and passed the exam, not a great score, but still. I honestly don’t think studying ONLY this book will enable you to pass, I don’t think studying any ONE book will enable you to pass, at the least you should have some way to practice everything hands-on, or “simulate” it however you can, because Cisco has questions on the exams that require you to know how to do some of the stuff hands on.
  Rating: 5 / 5
• John W. Kimsey says:

  February 4, 2010 at 3:43 pm

  I can’t imagine being able to pass this exam without this book. topics are well organized and very well covered. The included CD has the boson test on it, which is integrally tied to the book. If you miss a question on the test their is a link that will take directly to that section of the book that covers that material.
  Rating: 5 / 5

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