This past Wednesday I took and passed my GIAC GSEC exam. I am now officially GSEC Analyst 38087!

SANS 401 - Security Essentials and the GSEC exam are the main reason why I haven't been posting very much lately. With the course and exam out of the way, I plan to get back to postng more regularly. Before I do that, I wanted to give some quick thoughts on the course.

When I was told that I would be doing the SANS 401 course back in November, I was a bit annoyed. I was just about to start studying for the CISSP and was essentially told to forget that and focus on this course and the accompanying exam. I thought I was too good for a 401 course. I have 13 years of experience in IT. The last three and half of which I've spent in security. I didn't need some entry level training. Boy was I wrong. 

What SANS 401 security essentials did for me, was fill in a lot of holes in my IT and security knowledge. Networking things such as the OSI model, TCP/UDP traffic, and so on. It also introduced me to things at a higher level such as risk management, critical security controls, and so on. I learned new things about Windows, and I've been working on Windows since NT. I also got a better understanding of the Linux operating system.

The course taught me a lot of new things, while giving me a deeper understanding of the things I already knew. It was a very valuable course for me to take and I would recommend it for anyone in security.

 This post first appeared on Exploring Information Security.