I have been to Australia many times and I love it there. Beautiful country and everyone that I ever talked to was really nice.  I have been to Sidney, Perth (FAVORITE) and a few other smaller cities along the coast. I have always dreamed of a job opportunity like this, too bad my current contract is for another 3 years.

Ryan L.

Yes, everything was configured the same, the only thing that was might have been off is the order of the hard drives. Being 9 different combinations of which one connects to what might have been the limiting factor and the time crunch I was under before deploying.

After I get this fixed I am going back to a raid 0 and doing offsite backups instead.

Ryan L.

I have never seen R-Studio, that looks like it is going to be the trick.

I could not purchase the same motherboard but I did purchase one with the same raid controller and it would not recognize it.

Thanks guys, I knew I would find my answer in here

Ryan L.

First of all I am sorry if this is in the wrong section.

I figured that this issue I am having would best be suited here. I know nothing about forensics but I am ready to learn. I have an issue and my wife is about to kill me if I can not fix the problem. I had my desktop setup where I had the OS running off of a SSD drive and then I had 3 400gb SATA hard drives in a Raid 5 configuration off of the mother board to support all of the pictures, movies, music and stuff. This worked well since the hard drives were cheap and I had one fail and replacing it was not an issue since it picked the RAID back up with out a problem.

Well my motherboard bit the dust and its an outdated Gygabyte motherboard (I do not know what exact model since I am on deployment 1/2 a world away) I was troubleshooting this right before I left for deployment with no love.

We have lots of pictures and stuff on those drives, I was unable to successfully mount them to any operating system without them requesting to be formatted first. I bought another motherboard with a raid controller but it wants to rebuild the raid from scratch and format the drives.

Is there any way for me to get the pictures off of those 3 hard drives? (pictures of my Son from birth to his 2 year birthday and many others)

Thanks for any advice and direction you can send me. I am wanting to do this myself and make it a learning experience to get into the forensic hard drive stuff, but I really don't know where to start.

Ryan L.

I am going for a degree in Security at WGU and they count certain certificates for credits. The 5 they require for a degree are:

A+
Security+
CCNA
CCNA Security
Project+

I am going to knock out project+ next followed by the cisco certs to get a head start on my degree since the military pays for the testing. Then I am on to CISSP.

Well I was forced into taking a gauntlet of certification tests this past week. I took both of the A+ certs (practical/essentials) and my Security+ Cert all within a 4 day period.

So I studied for all 3 tests simultaneously and passed all 3 tests.

A+ Practical
Scored: 762

A+ Essentials
Scored: 758

Security+
Scored: 789

I know if I was able to study these independently I could have scored higher, but I am still impressed that I was able to pass the gauntlet of certs within a 4 day period. Work required me to do all certs within a week time frame. (military)

 

I always liked swordfish. Mainly because of that computer setup looked killer.

I am extremely impressed with what I am reading about WGU. Never heard of them, thanks for pointing me in that direction.

I have a question about degree's. With regards to pen testing and employment, do employers care if you get your degree from an online source like U of Phoenix? Being military and traveling its tough to go to a brick and mortar type of school. All of my classes so far have been online. Just want to make sure I am not wasting my time. Thanks!!

Falcon,

I do plan on retiring, the medical benefits alone are worth the 20 years. After doing this for 10 years, I already want to distance myself from DoD stuff even though they are a easy transition. 10 years from now after I retire I may feel differently, I will keep my options open. I have already received one good security school which really introduced me into the world of security. It was basically Security+ course on crack with a hint of HBSS. I am very impressed with the training that I have received and the schools/college/certifications I am able to obtain for free while serving. My wife keeps on pressuring me to continue on with my degree, I fought her on it a few years ago saying my experience will get me through. Yes I have since then grew up lol. OMG the maintenance on HBSS is intense! I still have yet to go through the school but I was told by one of the installers I am leaps and bounds ahead of the game since I dug into the documentation and reloaded myself and applied everything without help. I am not afraid of research, I thrive on it. Thanks again for all the advice and personal experiences, definitely helping me make smart decisions.

Falcon,

I have had to reload our HBSS a few times. It is surprizingly an easy system to work on. I have been working steadliy towards a degree in Business Administration because I did not really know what I wanted to do. All the classes I have been taking have been lower level classes, so they would be easily transferable to another degree. I am about 2 classes away from starting my upper level classes and I am going to shift my degree towards Information Security as others have suggested.

How long were you in the military? I am really trying not to become Gov or contractor when I get out unless I have a really good job offer.

I am in a interesting predictament right now. I am in the Navy, enlisted as an IT1 (E-6). I am in the middle of my second submission for an officer package into the management side of Information Security. If I get selected for my Officer Package it pushes me more towards the planning and management side instead of the "behind the keyboard" side of the job. The pay and benefits of the Officer side is really hard to outweigh against a job I really am not sure that I will enjoy. Also another hard swallow is if I get selected as an Officer, all of those certifications will have to come out of either my GI Bill (which I have not had to touch yet and want to leave to my kids) or out of my pocket. If I stay enlisted all of those certifications are free to me. For me it is a really hard decision, the pay of an Officer will outweigh the benefiets of the certifications, but will I find enjoyment in the management side? I can always do the management side during the day and focus on the "behind the keyboard" pen testing at night in my off time? I feel this is a critical turning point in my military career and I want to make sure I make the right decision not only for me, but for my family.

Ryan

Thank you all for your advice. I have been doing a lot of research and found that a lot of people do admit how hard it is to get into security becuase its just so vast.

I am going to focus going deeper into the knowledge that I already have to really get a better understanding of network/A+/OSI layers so when I dive deeper into the security side I have a better understanding of what I am doing.

My question to you guys is do you think OSCP should be precluded by other training? Is it a certification that can be "jumped" into and just learn trial by fire.

Thanks again for all of your help. I am really just scraping by on the A+ certification, meaning I am studying to take the test, not studying for long term application (short term cramming). I need to change my approach now to how I am going to be studying. I want these certs to be something that I know, not something that I crammed to pass the exam.

Ryan

Hello,

I am in the military. Been in for about 11 years now trained as a network/system administrator. I currently own (lead) about 5 networks supporting 80 people with day to day operations and maintenance with some repair/rebuilds as required. I work on Server 2003, cisco routers/switches/redhat/solaris/slackware/ubuntu/win XP/mint and various other OS's including VMware.

I am sick and tired of the customer service part of this job. I only have 2 guys underneath of me, and its not going to get any better for a while. I get to retire in 10 years and in those 10 years I want to improve my resume enough where i can walk out of the military and become a strong freelance pen tester/consultant. I have a multitude of resources at my disposal and the military will pay for me to get any of these certifications:
A+ (taking in 2 weeks)
Sec+ (taking in 3 weeks)
Net+
CASP
GCIH
GCIA
CISF
GSEC
GSE
GSLC
CISM
CISA
SSCP
CISSP
SCNA
SCNP
SCNS
All of the homeland security certs
CCDP
CCENT
CCNA
CCNP
Linux+
Server+
Fiber installer (FOI)
Fiber Technician (FOT)
MCDBA
MCITP
MCP
MCSA
MCSA Security
MCSE
MCSE Security
MCTS
Oracle/Solaris 10 SA

So as you can see I have a ton of resources to get all the study material and knock out certifications. I know its not about certifications and in 10 years many of these will not matter and the tech is going to evolve and change. I am a complete newb in terms of programming (i can do basic linux programming) and need a place to really start my research and grow into it. going through the security + student guide has really opened my eyes to how much I want to do this stuff. I just need to know which string I should start pulling first. Server maintenance, workstation trouble calls are taking the life out of me. I have been playing with McAfee Host Prevention system and its a cool program. Very detailed and dependent on databases. but its still feels like maintenance and defense. I am ready for some offense, or at least wanting to learn how to be offensive in security. Thanks for the help.

oh yeah first post. sorry if I missed a post that states my answer, but most of the "i need advice" posts were individuals junior in IT. I have built many networks from scratch in the middle of the desert to having people setup talking on video teleconference phones the following week over voip.

Thanks
Ryan