Is ENSA mandatory to take CEH?

[sooriyan]

While I go through InfoSec Institute's Ethical Hacking package, I found ENSA is a prerequisite. Do I need to complete ENSA to take CEH/CPT? Also when went through CEH's pre-requisite, it said like I need to take their training program to attempt CEH. Will taking the above InfoSec's packge be the same as attending ECC's training for CEH? The option is to challenge CEH without training, but need to have 2 years of experience in Info Sec, which I don't have.

[Data_Raid]

I would recommend to contact EC Council directly and ask them about exam eligibility: http://www.eccouncil.org/contact_us.aspx

When I did the CEH exam I went the self-study route and had to submit a request for an eligibility code to book the exam. If you have attended some other security training, EC-Council might take this into account and waiver the work experience.

11. Can I purse self-study and attempt the exam instead of attending formal training?

The answer is yes. You must show 2 years of work experience in security related field. You must also submit CEH exam eligibility application and obtain authorization from EC-Council before you can attempt the exam. Please visit http://www.eccouncil.org/certification/exam_information/take_exam.aspx for more details.

[hayabusa]

For C|EH, I had to have documented work experience, in the security realm.  That was a few yers back, now (  like 7 or 8  )  I don't know of any specific certification requirement, prior to taking it, though.  You'll definitely want to stay up on their continuing education requirements now, though, to maintain it AFTER taking it, since they've lined it up with many of the community requirements for certification.

(Edit- cleaned up where it turned my 8 into an emoticon)

[SephStorm]

No, the ECC website used to have each cert as a prereq, and i'm sure its still on the website, but I can confirm that you do not have to have the ENSA to do the CEH.

[BillV]

Concur. ENSA is not required for CEH.

You will need to submit a form to EC-Council in order to get an exam code so that you can schedule the CEH. I do not recall if ISI is an EC-Council authorized training provider or not.

The information is available here:
https://cert.eccouncil.org/how-to-become-certified/how-to-apply-pre-requisites

[SephStorm]

ISI is not to my knowledge, an ATC, but that shouldnt stop you from taking their training.

[BillV]

We recently had a national training event back in August and ISI was the training vendor for various courses... ethical hacking (CEH/CPTS), CISSP, and GIAC GCIH/GCFA.

The instructor for the CISSP course was great. The other two were lacking from my understanding. This was a very compressed timeframe, so it would certainly be difficult to cover two separate GIAC exams. The instructor for the ethical hacking course started the class off by saying "this class is supposed to cover material for CEH and [I believe] CPTS but will not prepare you for either exam." It was downhill from there.

But that's only my experience. Aside from their recent plagiarism, and the BackTrack "vulnerability" debacle, I have also heard good things about them as well.

The bottom line is just find out who the instructor will be ahead of time, and look into the background of that person.