I got my OSCP in Jan, and its an excellent exam.
I would say take your time with the course material, but also dont restrict yourself 100% to only whats in the material. A good security professional will think outside the box, and leverage what you find on the course, to take things to another level.

Take some time to look at the extra bits and bobs, and tackle them as you see fit.

For me the best thing about this course is the lab environment, its well setup and works well.

Enjoy and best of luck.

Where abouts are you in Europe mate.
I know of a few places in the UK I get my kit from, but that may be of no help to you.

Dale

I have been using the VM version since its release with no issues, I think there is a good improvement of the pre.
I have also just updated my 4Gb MicroVault that I use on my AspireOne for doing wireless stuff, and it works a treat. I created it using the ISO and unetbootin.

Personally I think WSUS is a good solution if your a Windows shop, however what ever works for the organisation is a good way to proceed.
I agree a VM environment can provide an excellent platform for multiple testing, rollbacks, etc a breeze, however I have seen on the odd occasion hardware issues with patching, so there is sometimes value in hardware based testing, especially if you have adopted standard hardware and this isnt a huge amount of devices.

Security Patching is important, however many organisations still do not treat it with the attention it deserves. Keeps us in a job though

In my opinion this really depends on the environment you are working in, the type of business you conduct and the methods used.
If you can share some more information, perhaps in a generic way, you can get some more targeted responses.

Ultimately its going to come down to the risk appetite of the business, how the organisation is structured, segmentation of the infrastructure, testing capabilities and budget.

Patch management is still something that so many organisations fail to do well, but at the same time it can be very simple.

Look forward to hearing more from you.

Got mine today also, 8GB of IronKey goodness.

You guys may or may not have heard about the issues with the STAR section of this book, and that is the reason the new release isnt until next year.

Jayson Street the author of this book is an excellent guy, I recommend you all join his community to be kept up to date on the book and his other offerings.

http://www.dissectingthehack.com/

Thanks
Dale

I have one of the first Gen IronKeys and they really do rock.

For those who are interested there is a new firmware update out 2.0.2.2 that now gives you control panel access on your Mac.
I have just moved to a Mac, so this is ideal for me

Nice list.

Dugg and tweeted.

Thanks Don, your a star 

For what its worth I am still waiting also.

I have spoken to a few encryption companies, and many have no plans to utilise TPM, and some didnt even know what it was

Glad you got the result you were looking for.
Now let the pain commence

I made a post about this on my blog.
I have tried this a couple of times, but couldnt get it to work.
I am not sure if its an issue with the image file, or something I am doing wrong, but its just not doing what it says on the tin.

For me I would say not the Shon book, as some of the statements and reference I found in the books did not match the CISSP material.

So I would say get the official CISSP book, and yes CCURE is a great resource.