So I recently acquired the surprisingly-massive Wireshark Study Guide. Jeez, I could do some damage with this thing; literally, as it happens.

I will be doing an in-depth review from the POV of a n00b as I go through the book, for anyone interested. I am like 40 pages in and already love her semi-informal style of writing. It relaxes you, makes it not feel like a textbook, then tightens up when it needs to be serious.

Just for the sake of being thorough, I should add that PrepLogic has something similar to the Career Academy all-access pass, only it's two years of access instead of just one. 

I don't have any relevant experience beyond some work solving your typical tech problems at people's home and tutoring people in basic computer usage.  My skills extend beyond that, but only so far.  I want to eventually get into computer security, but I clearly don't have the knowledge or experience I need to do that. 

Short-term, I want to be able to get an entry-level job in something IT-related in January while I work towards personal development in the area. 

Anyway, I want to do more than just pass the test, you know?  I'm going to do just that with Sec+ in a couple of weeks because it's kind of basic, but I want to learn more.  $2k seems really attractive because the alternatives are usually 2x as expensive or more if you want to go way in-depth and I'm better off with self-study anyhow.

I'm running a one-coffee day, but does the above make sense? 

I should add, as far as comparison, I'm less interested in what will help me pass the test so much as which set will help me learn the material more.  For $135 or whatever the software is for each of the TechCerts things are, I'm imaging the CA stuff is likely to stack up better in that respect, yes?

I'm willing to shell out the extra money if it means I get a better learning experience. 

Has anyone else gone after Career Academy's all-access pass?  I've heard good things about their training overall and I've been considering the pass because it covers so much different ground over a 12-month access period.  It's about $2k, so it's expensive, but it gives online access to pretty much everything they offer, which is neat.

In a 12-month period, I'm pretty much guaranteed not to use ALL of the different access (there are like 40 different things on there) but I'd end up using at least 5 or 6 of them (which would individually cost more than the whole thing), so it seems like a good move financially if I were to use their stuff. 

TechnologyCerts is way cheaper, but I don't know a lot about the quality of the training compared to the CA stuff.

Thoughts/comments? 

Heh, I go away for two days and interesting replies pop up. 

I will have a look at that site, and I'm strongly considering going after the WCNA.

Thanks!

Hey all,

Did a quick search through the forum whilst on my phone and didn't see anything about the WCNA.  Has anyone here looked at this? Would it be worth it for someone with very little experience?

Thanks for the read, I'm diving right in!

Hey guys,

I was reading an article that I stumbled upon somehow, through my Twitter timeline no doubt.  It's from way back in 2004, but it's all about Cyberwarfare.  Published by the guys at the Institute for Security Technology studies, the article is entitled Cyber Warfare: An Analysis of the Means and Motives of Selected Nation States.

So it gives you the overview, it gives you the executive summary, then it goes on to talk about China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India and North Korea.  It is an academic document and thus littered with references to related readings that are (from what few I perused) also highly interesting (though some are dated).  There's some interesting discussion of asymmetric warfare (especially in response to the comparatively overwhelming power of the USA's conventional military), information warfare, hacktivism (which is totally the word de jour) and the evolution of IT networks in the US into a "strategic center of gravity."

Table 1, on page 22 / 142, strikes me as particularly interesting because it discusses a lot of critical topic areas both in the private and public sector.  The latter are more interesting, since the private sector was always going to respond in a more agile, speedier fashion out of necessity.  

The list of public sector topic areas includes, but is not limited to:

Active cyber warfare units, available cyber warfare doctrine, computer emergency response teams (CERTs, if you will, heh), cyber crime prevention and investigation teams, government-run academic institutions with cyber programs, government-sponsored IT projects, Intelligence Service capabilities, C4I information Warfare capability (Military Command and Control Communications, Computers and Intelligence), and so forth.

The article concerns itself more with the aforementioned nations and the threat they represent to the United States (and really the rest of the world) with their developing cyber warfare programs (and China's Blue Team is already somewhat well-known at this stage), so I'm compelled to ask, how well do you think the US (or anyone else that you care to discuss) is mobilizing to deal with this knew theatre (yes, theatre, I'm Canadian) of warfare?  

I don't know how relevant it is right now, but I'm looking at starting at WGU in January.  It's comparatively inexpensive stacked next to most other online-only programs (apart from shorter-run stuff like the OffSec certs) and it looks like it's got a pretty broad curriculum, not just the usual private college nonsense where they rip you through A+, Net+, Sec+ and then a bunch of MS certs, so that's reassuring.

If no one else has said anything on here by then, I'll tell you guys all about my experience. 

Awesome, was just curious because I'd had a similar issue.  Can't wait til my physical copy arrives, but I wanted to pre-order so I could have it right away. 

I had to log out and then log back in for my download to register as available, but it was there minutes after I'd actually made my purchase.  Any update, nicklaus?

FWIW, I'm a new student with HackingDojo.com and haxrbyte is actually my teacher for the novice-level class (1R); *waves*.  As far as the presence/absence of Thomas, I should point out that while we interact with our direct teacher, we actually also get access to a video version recorded by Thomas as well, so we can hear the material presented to us in two different styles.  So far (really early into the n00b class, mind), that's been more than enough to help the material come across.