1-Man IT Department

Things on my Mind

Hello again from the Deep South of Alabama. It has been 9 days since my last update so I thought that I would jot down some things that I have been thinking about lately.

Forgot to Mention:

I did forget to mention in my last post that I successfully completed the requirements for attaining my first IT certification. I talked about it in some previous posts that I was attending the SANS Institute’s Security Essentials Bootcamp in Sept 2007. In February of 2008, I took the requisite two tests and passed with flying colors (90 and 89). So now I am a GIAC Security Essentials Certified (GSEC) professional. I was quite excited since it is my first certification. My next goal is to get a Cisco CCNA. I am putting 4 new Cisco routers in my enterprise so I think that I need to get proficient in using them. I would like to complete the study for this cert in 2008 and have the cert by the end of the 1st quarter of 2009.

SANS Training Updates not forgotten

I have not forgotten to finish the SANS Security Essentials recaps. I was preoccupied the nights of the 4th thru 6th days of the training. I will fill this in, hopefully this weekend so that the whole series is complete.

Popularity: 77% [?]

Security Bootcamp - Day 3

Well, what can I say about today. At the end of it, we will be halfway through our course books. Today was a lot of fun for me. We talked about a lot of stuff that I did not know anything about. So let’s just jump into it.

Day 3 - Internet Security Technologies

Security Essentials - Day 2 Defense-In-Depth

Well, another day, another 500+ book to go through in Security Training.

Today was Defense-In-Depth day at Security Essentials Bootcamp. I really enjoyed today a lot. We finished the fundamental stuff yesterday and started hitting the ground cracking (literally).

We started with a discussion of what Defense-In-Depth entailed. We hit on multiple layers of protection, the CIA Triad, risk management and the differences between threat and vulnerabilities. Then we began a rather lengthy talk about the differences between viruses, worms and trojans, and hit on some of the big hitters from years past…Melissa, Sasser, Slammer…ahhh, the good ole days. After a brief overview of malware and it effects, we moved on to the next section.

SANS Security Essentials Bootcamp Day 1

I am spending this week traveling to Birmingham, Alabama to attend the SANS Community Event that is teaching SEC401 - Security Essentials Bootcamp. The class is me and 23 others from all over the country. Most are from Alabama, but there are some from my home state of Louisiana (Louisiana Lottery Corp.) a couple from Georgia (including one gent who had to wear his University of Georgia Coachs shirt today, argh!), and then individuals from Arkansas, North and South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee. The class is being taught by Matt Pierce who is the Security Administrator at AdTran in Huntsville, AL.

When we each arrive at the hotel, we are greeted with a black zippered bag with the SANS logo on it. When I lifted mine up, I thought that I had thrown my back out again. I looked down and saw 6 books that are each at least 2″ thick in them. Upon closer inspection, there was one book for each day, and they are each at least 500 pages. WOW! That is over 3000 pages of documentation for this training course.